Ireland should fight to reduce EU trade barriers says Amazon

Speaking at an event to mark Amazon's 20th anniversary in Ireland today, Russell Grandinetti, senior vice president for international stores at Amazon, said that the excoriating criticism about the EU's industrial policies from former European Central Bank president Mario Draghi this week should be considered.

"I think that those are important and timely," Mr Grandinetti said of the Draghi Report's recommendations, which labelled the EU as 'overregulated' and said that the bloc risks falling behind the US in industrial growth and open trade.

"Europe could really benefit from relatively less focus on putting up trade barriers in a focus on how to actually grow," he said.

"Ireland sits in a unique position to foster what I hope would be an increasingly constructive dialog about trade across the Atlantic Ocean."

Speaking at the same event, Dublin's Lord Mayor, James Geoghegan, launched an attack on planning refusals for data centres in Ireland.

"Planning authorities in this city are refusing applications for new data centres, citing the existing insufficient capacity in the electricity network and the lack of significant on-site renewable energy to power the data center as reasons," he said.

"Data centres are indispensable for the AI revolution. We can't afford a narrow worldview as to their role in delivering an infrastructure that maintains, develops and grows an economy to meet the technological advancements of the 21st century. The answer to the inevitable expansion of data centres across the globe is not for Ireland to shut its doors."

Also speaking at the event, Enterpriser Ireland CEO, Leo Clancy, said that 18,000 people in Ireland are employed by companies "for whom a large of their business is constructing data centres".

Their comments come after it was revealed that Ireland has secured none of Amazon Web Services' new €35bn investment round in Europe.

Last week AWS said it plans to invest £8bn (€9.47bn) in the UK over the next five years on building, operating, and maintaining data centres.

Data centres in the UK are to be classified as critical national infrastructure alongside the likes of emergency services, finance and healthcare systems, and energy and water supplies, putting them in line for government support in the event of a major incident, such as a cyber attack or extreme weather.

"We've announced more than €30bn euro of investment in other European locations, in Spain, in Germany, France and most recently, in the UK," said Amazon Web Services' country lead for Ireland, Neil Morris.

"The next wave of data centre infrastructure investment is happening all around us. We want to continue growing and expanding here, if conditions allow. We in AWS hope that opportunities for Irish cloud infrastructure farms will not just be limited to overseas this year. I'm on record as to what we as a nation need to deliver. If we get the delivery of offshore wind right and a correct energy policy framework in place, then Ireland will be well positioned to win substantial investment from multinationals like Amazon."

Amazon employs 6,500 people around Ireland. It plans to launch its Amazon.ie web store next year.