LOCALS OPPOSING PLANS for a data centre in Naas are promising to fight the proposal at “every step”, after they were dealt a setback to their campaign this week. 

A bid to halt the project failed on Monday when Kildare County Council members voted against changing the zoning of land earmarked for a data centre on the outskirts of Naas at Jigginstown.

The concerns surround a 55-hectare site of farmland – about seven Croke Parks – on which US company Microsoft wants to build a data centre campus.

The site is close to the M7 motorway and a busy business park in Naas, but on its other side are a housing estate and numerous scattered homes – many of these households are vehemently opposed to the plans.

Louise Griffiths, who lives in one of the homes on the Jigginstown road, told The Journal on Tuesday that the campaign was determined to stop the data centre’s development.

Locals are discussing ways forward, including taking a judicial review against the data centre if it makes its way through the planning process.

Griffiths said that “more evidence is becoming widely known about its impact on electricity, our water”, pointing to different reports that had been released on the sector’s growth over recent months. Among these were how the facilities accounted for 22% of national electricity grid demand in 2024.

“These should not be in people’s back gardens, and they essentially will be with the current plan,” Griffiths said.

Growing campaign

The Naas campaign has grown in size over recent months, with Social Democrat councillor Chris Prender telling The Journal that he has counted “392 individual emails” in his inbox on Jigginstown.

“It’s really taken off, and people are really driven and motivated by this,” he said.

Prender added that it has been spurred on by plans for a separate data centre nearby, which has also raised concerns.

Dozens of protesters gathered outside Kildare County Council’s offices on Monday evening as councillors discussed and eventually voted against the plan to change the zoning of the land.

Protesters in Naas on Monday Chris Prender Chris Prender

The full breakdown of the vote has not been released, but following Monday’s council meeting, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael issued a joint statement to convey their position, in which they acknowledged the “scale” of the campaign, saying it had “made it impossible” for councillors to reply to every resident.

They argued that any zoning decision undergoes “extensive scrutiny”, and that through this process “no objections were received from statutory agencies such as Irish Water, energy regulator, etc, that the proposal within the Naas plan was flawed”. 

The councillors added that to overturn the decision at this stage would “undermine” the process and in turn would “give vulnerability” to all decisions of zoning, while setting an “unwarranted precedent” in Kildare’s zoning regime.

Members of Independent Ireland, Sinn Féin and other representatives also voted in favour of residents’ demands. The vote was defeated with 22 councillors voting against the motions, while 11 voted in favour and seven councillors abstained.

What happens next

Microsoft has yet to lodge a planning application but Griffiths said that when it does, it is likely to face “mass objections”.

If the project overcomes hurdles at the local council and An Coimisiún Pleanála level, locals may still launch a judicial review in the High Court. 

However, this measure has been complicated because the government changed the law around costs awarded in judicial review cases, capping the amount that can be paid even where a case is successful.

This means that any campaign by residents would need to either fundraise heavily or dip into their own pockets to fund a High Court challenge.

Griffiths said residents are well aware also that what they are fighting is also going against the policy direction of the government, which lifted a moratorium on data centre development earlier this year. 

It has given full backing to the sector, with wider industry following suit, as seen last week in Dublin when senior construction figures focused on data centres as a key point of development for Irish companies into the future.

On the government’s plans, Griffiths said that there was “real disappointment” at feeling campaigners were not being listened to.

“It’s like they’re just, ‘We don’t care if you don’t like what we’re doing, we’ll do it anyway’,” she said.

Griffiths, who works as a bookkeeper locally, said that campaigners have been dubbed “anti-tech and anti-progress” by critics who support the expansion of the data centre sector, including some councillors.

“You have to be open to reviewing things as evidence changes, and maybe the decision we made back then [to zone this land] is not the best decision now for the future,” she added.

Microsoft was contacted for comment and did not respond in time for publication.