After two years of litigation in the courts, in early October the courts have left the door open for Apple to build Europe’s second largest data centre in the Galway region. In Athenry, where they declared their love of the multinational in September for a demonstration on the street, people are crazy. On the contrary, the three who came to the hearing have expressed their intention to appeal the judgment.

One is Brian McDonagh, who has spent EUR 22 million on buying other so-called Apple-appropriate land, and who now does not want to lose. The second is Attorney Sinead Fitzpatrick, who lives next to the area where the project takes place. The third and truly controversial one is Allan Daly, an American woman married to an Athenian who works online with environmental counsel Sierra Search from California.

Allan Daly was visited last summer by journalist David Gilbert to gather his arguments in the middle Vice in the chronicle “A man from a small Irish town can walk Apple’s plans for Europe.” "Daly's concern is that Apple's new data center will be a huge burden on the Irish electricity grid. Apple also has no plans to reduce the large emissions of gases that will be produced in the new buildings of the city. The place they have chosen for the project is not the right one either, in Galway there are more suitable spaces among those nominated on the planet.”

In August 2015 he received a visit from Apple representatives in the UK. In an appointment at the only hotel in Athenry, they spoke with great sweetness, “but they made it clear that they would not change anything, that they would do the same in the form and in the deadlines that they told them.” The most valuable company in the world is used to acting like this.

In these times of crisis, with the sale of the most deteriorated iPhones, the iTunes, the App Store, the iMessage, the iPhoto and the other services, which need data department stores, are particularly important to ensure results. And as the European parliaments are concerned about the worldwide dissemination of their citizens’ data, their collection in Europe has become a necessity. Apple wants yours not to depend on anyone in that fundamental part of their business. It already has one built in Denmark and this one from Ireland will be the second built outside the United States.

Daly will not be the first or the only one to say that Ireland has very low environmental control in this type of project, but as most have gone back, he has gone ahead. Incidentally, it is also against another EUR 1 billion data centre that Amazon wants to carry out on the university campus in Dublin.

It denounces that the Dublins authorities conceal from the people, through the Irish Development Agency, the real environmental effects of the projects in their obsession with bringing multinationals. It is no wonder that the majority of the inhabitants of Athenry and surrounding areas are outraged at Daly for the fear that they will lose the opportunity to revive the region. At Athenry for Apple, you can hear his arguments, the hopes for Apple's progress and the outrage against Daly.

As Vic’s journalist was with the members of this team, Daly, quoted by one of them, told her that “if she continued to obstruct large projects, she would end up like Michael McCoy.” McCoy, who in another town in the Dublin area was engaged in obstructing projects, found his body at the end of last year, killed by beatings. If you look at the newspaper library, you can read that the police haven't found any murderers.

New colonialism in Europe

Allan Daly estimates that if a date store is built in Athenry, Apple will consume 240 Megawatts, which accounts for 6% of electricity consumption in Ireland, equivalent to a quarter of the country’s total housing. Apple has announced that within a maximum of five years, the Basque company will reach the 30 Megawatts. Daly replied that Apple excludes from the accounts the consumption of its many services in Ireland.

The fact is that Ireland has become a strategic place for many companies. On the one hand, with Brexit, he could remain the only English-speaking country in the European Union. On the other hand, taxes on company profits are the lowest in Europe. Microsoft was the first to land, imposing in 2009 a nearly five-hectare building in Dublin. Then you've got Alibaba, Google, Amazon, Facebook ...

The multinational’s date stores last year consumed more than 300 Megawathies. To this end, Ireland has had to make major adjustments to the electricity grid, taking billions of euros out of the Irish pocket. In return, they generate very few jobs, Apple quotes 150 for Athenry, while Amazon has created 15 for Dublin.

Apple says it's going to get all the energy from renewables. Greenpeace has also applauded this activity. Daly believes that it is not acceptable to absorb this huge consumption of existing renewables, but that Apple authorities should force their environmental impact to be reduced. Denmark, for example, requires that a data centre be built so that computers can take advantage of the heat generated by the heating of neighbouring houses, as they have asked Seatl Amazon; in California, Google collects the rain from roofs to cool the machines. Apple would have been able to make similar compensation if it had accepted another land in Athenry instead of 200 hectares of forest, heating up the city's public buildings. But Apple is already used to doing everything he wants in Ireland.

In the same days when the Dublin judges gave the green light to the Athenry date store, the European Commission has sued Ireland for forgiving EUR 13 billion in taxes on Apple. In September of last year, the European authorities have already ordered Apple to claim these unpaid taxes from the Dublin authorities. Tremendous amounts like two-thirds of Ireland's annual social spending. But in addition to the government, citizens are also in favour of not claiming debt, according to the surveys.

The Celtic tiger that the neoliberals have been citing since the 1980s as a model of development for all others has offered the multinationals the conditions of a tax paradise. When the 2008 crisis broke out, no one touched their tax obligations. Ireland will do its best to avoid this European measure and to delight these large corporations: It has many characteristics of a 21st century colony, including dependence on citizens. Under those conditions, see who teaches Apple's teeth.