AS THE HOME to many of the European headquarters for some of the biggest tech companies in the world, the fate of Ireland’s economy is inextricably linked with that of big tech.

However, with plans to build dozens more energy-draining data centres across the country, concerns over Ireland’s relationship with the new digital age go well beyond the economy. 

Add to this the looming spectre of hard-to-regulate cryptocurrency markets and digital assets, the widespread use of facial recognition technology for the purposes of surveillance, and long-standing issues of privacy, the future of tech has the potential to become very messy. 

This episode of The Good Information Podcast looks at Ireland’s digital strategy, and gauge how laws being passed at the European level could go some of the way to taking power out of the hands of global tech giants. 

You can catch up with previous episodes of The Good Information Podcast here, and check out all of our reporting on the new digital age here.

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This work is co-funded by Journal Media and a grant programme from the European Parliament. Any opinions or conclusions expressed in this work is the author’s own. The European Parliament has no involvement in nor responsibility for the editorial content published by the project. For more information, see here.