A €200m data centre that will be built on the outskirts of Cork city will result in the creation of 150 permanent jobs and hundreds of construction jobs, it has emerged.

Commercial property company JCD Group is planning to build a major data centre on a 25,550sqm site at the former Mitsui Denman plant in Little Island.

Planning permission for the project is expected to be granted in the coming weeks.

According to the Irish Examiner, the developers have access to a 60MW electrical grid connection that will go live in mid-2017.

The project has been given impetus by the landing of the Hibernia Network subsea cable in Cork last year.

What this means is that Cork can offer the shortest data transfer latency between Europe and the US east coast.

This will be a bonus for the substantial technology industry that has grown up in Cork, including major giants such as Apple, EMC, IBM, Eventbrite, Pivotal and Qualcomm, as well as a major biotech cluster including Pfizer and Boston Scientific.

Ireland’s data centre boom

It may not be the only data centre winging its way to Cork. In December 2014, EMC filed for planning permission to build a data centre in Ovens, Co Cork, adjacent to its existing facility, within a 10-year period. Less than a year later, Dell announced it would acquire EMC in a cash-and-stock deal valued at $67bn – the largest acquisition in tech history.

Ireland is undergoing something of a data centre boom that will see the country emerge as one Europe’s foremost digital locations. There are up to 30 data centres active in Dublin city and Facebook is building a €200m data centre in Clonee, on the Meath-Dublin border.

Meanwhile, Apple is planning to build a €850m data centre in Athenry, Galway, which will be powered 100pc by renewable energy.

Cork city image via Shutterstock