Apple fiasco shows we fail to plan ahead

IT IS a serious embarrassment to Ireland that the Apple data centre, once guaranteed for Athenry in Co. Galway, appears to be in jeopardy. The company’s chief executive, Tim Cook, refused to commit to it when he met Leo Varadkar in California on Thursday. Equally, the language in the company’s statements has cooled considerably following yet another court challenge – albeit an unsuccessful one – to the €850m project.

The right to object to a development is a healthy element of our democracy but the process is unwieldy and ill-suited to dealing with plans for large infrastructural development. That is why we require compulsory purchase orders for the likes of motorways and hospitals.

Companies such as Apple need to make strategic long-term plans for future expansion and cannot sit around for two years waiting for every legal avenue in Irish law to be exhausted.

Mr Varadkar says we will change the laws but why are these objections not anticipated and headed off at the pass? We blame politicians but this is the responsibility of the civil service, which should be soliciting communities for their thoughts and assuaging any concerns before they become mired in a legal quagmire.

The West can ill afford to lose 300 jobs but it will not be the only loser; Mr Varadkar made a naïve diplomatic faux pas and hopefully has learned that you never go to a meeting where you don’t know the outcome. The whole saga is redolent, yet again, of our ingrained failure to plan and is hugely damaging to our reputation as an attractive destination for tech firms. It is also a betrayal of the majority of locals who welcomed Apple with open arms.