While Mary Harney once asked whether Ireland’s future lay with Boston or Berlin, today’s climate change challenges are pitching Daisy against the data centre.

With this in mind, the Dealer notes that the supposed employment benefits offered by data centres – limited as they may be – are front and centre in a new advertising drive on the national airwaves.

The campaign comes as the Government is finding it increasingly difficult to justify its facilitation of the energy-guzzling data sector, at a time when it is warning all others that they must limit their carbon footprint and the State scrambles to avoid power blackouts.

Contrasting treatment

The contrasting treatment of the country’s dairy and beef herds and data centres – some of which require as much electricity as an entire county and the water supply of a large regional town – was illustrated by recent responses from An Taoiseach Micheál Martin and Minister for Agriculture Charlie McConalogue.

While insisting at Moorepark recently that the country’s livestock numbers would have to “stabilise” to meet stringent carbon emissions targets, the Taoiseach immediately kicked to touch when asked if a similar moratorium was to be placed on data centre expansion.

Minister McConalogue was equally evasive when asked by the Irish Farmers Journal why dairy and beef holdings had to curb livestock numbers while the data industry enjoyed unfettered expansion.

Is this an illustration of the stark power and influence imbalance that clearly exists between the agri and tech industries, The Dealer wonders?

Or has it to do with the multibillion tax windfalls the tech sector invariably delivers each year?

It certainly has little to do with jobs.