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by JumpCrisscross 20 days ago
What fraction of Irish GDP is linked to datacenters? If I remember correctly from the pre-AI world, datacenters were at the heart of Dublin's industrial strategy, and they were credibly linked to a double-digit fraction of production.
2 comments

Irelands big pull to these companies is to not tax them as much as other countries.
That said, once built and lit up, it's hard to move a data center to another country.
Yep, seen a data-centre move happen at work (from a distance - I wasn't effected). For a business with cross-data centre redundancy and no allowable down-time for core business, it was at least a year-long project I think. All for a data-centre in the same city.
A year isnt very long considering sums involved here. At a certain hyperscaler a full dc build out took 2-3 years but we heard that aws did that in a year all in. And also musk proved you can do it literally over holiday break but you don’t have to go that extreme - just dont let cya pmcs do it
Like 90%+ cost of a dc is actual computers which are pretty shippable
Even in the hypothetical that datacenters would double Ireland’s GDP what real positive impact would it have if they pay zero taxes?
They do pay tax, 12.5%. Plus employment during construction and maintenance. There's also ancillary investment in national infrastructure such as Google's CO2 battery
The rest of Europe sued Ireland to get them to stop being a tax haven. Ireland basically refuses to do so. If they did, most of their economy evaporates overnight (and the US government gets a lot more tax revenue). Ireland's economy is basically 2 tax shelters in a trench coat.
Did you mean hypothesis?
I meant hypothetical, thanks for pointing it out.