A new Government policy statement aims to attract new data centres to regional locations that are under less infrastructural and energy capacity pressure than Dublin.

Minister for Business, Enterprise and Innovation Heather Humphreys has published plans to develop centres that are "critically important to ensuring Ireland continues to be a leader in the digital economy".

The statement comes a month after Apple announced that it would not proceed with its planned data centre in Athenry, Co Galway.

The technology giant's decision, which came as a bitter blow to the local community, came about after delays in the planning approval process.

Apple said these delays had forced it to make other plans.

Today's plan acknowledges the demand for data centres and is based on having a coherent strategic plan in place across Government departments for future developments.

It is hoped in Government that new data centres will contribute to regional development and support the creation of high quality, sustainable jobs.

The policy aims to match electricity demand with generation capacity as data centres are highly energy intensive and this presents challenges.

The Government also acknowledges that the number of people directly employed in data centres is relatively small.

But there are over 100,000 employed in ICT companies in Ireland and many of those companies need data centres to facilitate their operations and continue to grow.

The Government has emphasised the importance of strategic planning.

For example, if companies want to set up data centres in Ireland, some of them will need to look at putting them in regional locations as places such as Dublin are under the most pressure in terms of energy capacity.

The Government is also encouraging the Industrial Development Authority to increase its emphasis on promoting regional locations for data centre investment.

The IDA has identified specific sites across Ireland that could potentially accommodate large scale data centre projects.

Among the criteria for selecting these potential sites has been proximity to energy and other appropriate infrastructures.

Today's announcement also acknowledges that the development of data centres has encountered difficulties recently as a result of delays due to planning appeals and subsequent judicial reviews of planning permissions.

There is an acknowledgment in Government that a balance needs to be struck between the need to take account of community and public concerns around individual projects and ensuring timely decision making in the planning process.

As previously indicated, moves are being made to ensure a more streamlined decision-making process for planning.

The Government is amending the planning process for data centres over certain size thresholds to reclassify them as strategic infrastructure development.

It is also reviewing judicial review timelines on planning decisions, while also emphasising the continuing importance of public and community consultation processes.