Ireland's data centre sector is reaching a critical inflection point, and the developments unfolding right now will shape the country's digital, energy and water future for decades to come.
We have been following the progress of the ART Data Centres development in Ennis, County Clare with great interest, and note the significance of this week's landmark High Court ruling, which clears the way for works to commence on this €1.6 billion campus.
This represents a significant moment for Ireland’s digital economy, particularly in the West, as the ruling helps define how the data centre industry approaches its responsibilities to the environment, local communities and the sustainable use of our most valuable resources - particularly in the context of ongoing public debate around energy demand and grid capacity.
A Project Built on the Right Principles
In that context, the ART Data Centres campus in Ennis stands as a test case for how the next generation of data centre developments can respond to these challenges, embedding environmental responsibility and resource efficiency into their design from the outset. What distinguishes the ART Data Centres campus is this guiding philosophy. Joint founders Tom McNamara and Vincent Fogarty have been clear in their vision, noting that the High Court judgement “recognises that there is a future for environmentally-sensitive data centre developments like ours, where there is responsible use of renewable energy, grid-supporting generation technology and heat-recycling for both agri-food and local heating schemes.”
These commitments point to a fundamentally different approach to data centre development, one that treats environmental responsibility as a core design principle, embedded across every aspect of the project.
The scale and ambition of what is planned for this 145-acre site, just outside Ennis along the M18, is significant. The campus will include:
- Six data halls totalling 1.2 million sq. ft
- A power substation and dedicated energy centre
- A vertical farm for growing crops
- A district heating connection to benefit the wider local community
- A total capacity of 200MW; making it attractive to the world's largest technology partners
Phase 1, comprising the electrical substation and Data Halls 2 and 3, is scheduled for completion and commissioning by the end of 2028. At peak, the project is expected to support up to 1,200 construction jobs, alongside thousands of indirect roles and, ultimately, up to 1,000 permanent positions, underpinning further employment across the wider digital economy.
Ireland is already home to the European headquarters or data infrastructure of sixteen of the world’s top twenty technology firms, according to IDA Ireland. The ART Ennis campus further signals that this digital footprint is now extending beyond Dublin, reinforcing Ireland’s position as one of Europe’s most attractive destinations for global technology investment. Eight years in the making, the project represents a transformative investment for the Mid-West.
Energy Responsibility as a Non-Negotiable Standard
The significance of the ruling extends beyond a single project. It speaks to the conditions under which data centre development can move forward in Ireland.
Digital Infrastructure Ireland welcomed the decision, with Chairman Maurice Mortell highlighting its broader implications, namely, that data centres can have a viable future in Ireland, provided they operate with energy responsibility, deploy grid-supporting generation technologies, and deliver tangible benefits such as heat reuse for surrounding communities.
This framing is increasingly important. According to Carbon Brief (2025)1, data centres could account for nearly a third of Ireland’s total electricity consumption by 2026, up from 21% in 2023. Against this backdrop, a critical question emerges: how can one of Ireland’s most economically valuable sectors continue to grow without placing unsustainable pressure on the national energy system?
Mortell also addressed a concern that has weighed on the sector in recent years, that Ireland had begun to be perceived internationally as effectively closed to new data centre development, due to constraints around planning, grid connections and overall policy direction. This ruling, and the project it enables, sends a clear counter-signal to the global technology community.
However, renewed momentum brings renewed responsibility. Data centres are among the most resource-intensive facilities in operation. A 200MW campus of the scale planned for Ennis will place significant demands not only on the electricity grid, but also on water infrastructure, cooling systems and process water management.
The commitment to responsible energy use - so central to the ART Data Centres vision - must therefore extend across every dimension of resource use, particularly water, where efficiency, resilience and circularity will be critical to long-term sustainability.
The Water and Process Technology Behind
Sustainable Data Centre Operations
When the conversation turns to data centre sustainability, energy and carbon quite rightly dominate the discussion. Yet there is a parallel resource challenge that receives far less attention, despite being equally critical to the long-term environmental and operational performance of large-scale data centres: water and process fluid management.
The Government’s Statement on the Role of Data Centres (Government of Ireland, 2022)2 indicates that Uisce Éireann supplies approximately 608,000 megalitres of water annually, of which just 0.13% (around 810 megalitres) is consumed across all known data centres. While this figure suggests that data centres are relatively low water users, a simple comparison to national water supply does not capture the localised pressures that a complex facility like the ART Ennis campus can place on water infrastructure.
A development of this scale relies on highly sophisticated water treatment and cooling systems to operate safely, efficiently, and in full compliance with environmental standards. These systems must deliver ultra-pure water to protect sensitive hardware, maintain precise cooling performance across millions of square feet of data hall space, and do so in a manner that minimises both energy consumption and environmental impact.
This is precisely the kind of expertise that Veolia brings to the table. Our specialised water and process technologies are designed for projects of this nature, ensuring that large-scale data centres can operate sustainably while meeting the highest standards of efficiency and reliability.
Smarter Energy Use in Water Systems
We partner with data centre developers and operators to implement advanced treatment technologies, closed-loop water systems and intelligent energy optimisation solutions that turn sustainability commitments into measurable, operational outcomes. Our approach is always tailored, because no two facilities are the same, and no single solution fits every challenge.
Our work is guided by the GreenUp Strategic Program: a commitment to decarbonising, depolluting and regenerating natural resources across everything we do. For data centre clients, this translates into solutions that reduce environmental impact while lowering operational costs, supporting regulatory compliance and, crucially, reinforcing the social licence to operate - something projects like the Ennis campus have worked hard to earn.
We also help operators explore alternative water sources and adopt the kind of circular water management approaches that significantly reduce freshwater consumption without ever compromising on the performance and reliability that modern computing infrastructure demands.
Semiconductor-Grade Water Treatment: Purity That Protects Performance
As data centres take on increasingly demanding workloads, the standards required of their process water systems rise accordingly. Modern data centre cooling and process circuits demand water treatment solutions capable of achieving semiconductor-grade purity - not just removing visible contaminants, but achieving water quality at a molecular level.
Veolia leverages extensive experience in the global semiconductor and microelectronics sectors – arguably the most demanding environment for water quality in any industry. Applied to data centre infrastructure, our semiconductor water technology delivers:
- Ultra-high purity water (UHPW) that safeguards the most sensitive components and cooling circuits
- Advanced membrane filtration and ion exchange systems engineered to the specific demands of large-scale data centre operations
- Continuous real-time quality monitoring to ensure purity standards are consistently maintained at every point in the system
- Fully scalable solutions designed to grow alongside the facility as capacity expands through successive development phases
For a phased development like the ART Ennis campus, where Phase 1 will be followed by further data halls and infrastructure over time, specifying semiconductor-grade water treatment from the very beginning is not over-engineering. It is the foundation of a facility that will perform reliably, efficiently and sustainably for decades to come.
Design It Right From Day One
One of the most consistent lessons from our work across some of the world's most demanding industrial and technology facilities is straightforward but profound: it is always more effective, and more cost-efficient, to build sustainability in from the start than to retrofit it later.
The ART Data Centres project has the advantage of starting with a clean sheet and a clear set of values around responsible development. The decisions being made right now about water treatment infrastructure, cooling system architecture, process fluid management, and energy optimisation will define the environmental performance of this facility for the next 20 to 30 years.
A Shared Commitment to Ireland's Digital Future
We share the view expressed by Digital Infrastructure Ireland that this ruling should bring “renewed momentum” to a sector that is strategically vital to Ireland’s economic future. The ART Ennis campus, with its commitment to offshore wind integration, heat recycling for local communities, and environmentally-sensitive design, represents exactly the kind of data centre development that Ireland needs more of.
At Veolia, we are ready to be part of that story. Through our semiconductor-grade water treatment expertise, and our broader portfolio of industrial water solutions, we are committed to helping data centres like the ART Ennis campus operate smarter, cleaner, and more responsibly; from the first day of commissioning through to decades of operational life.
For more information on the solutions we provide for data centre facilities, contact one of our experts below.
1Carbon Brief (2025). Referenced in relation to the projected increase in data centre electricity consumption from 21% in 2023 to 32% by 2026.
2Government of Ireland (2022). Government Statement on the Role of Data Centres in
Ireland’s Enterprise Strategy.
