Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said Apple CEO Tim Cook is no longer committing to build a $1 billion data center in the country after multiple objections have slowed the process, Reuters reports. Apple committed to build the data center back in February 2015 and last month Business Insider reported that an Irish court had cleared the way for its construction.
But in a meeting last Thursday Cook refused to commit to moving forward with the project, Varadkar said. While the PM said the government would do “anything within our power” to move the project along — including amending its planning laws to make data centers easier to approve by listing them as “strategic infrastructure” — he said, “We didn’t get a start date, or a definite commitment or anything like that,” at the meeting.
Meanwhile a second European data center is already in the works in Denmark after another announced around the same time as the project in Ireland is preparing to go online later this year.
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