Michael McGrath (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I propose to take Questions Nos. 105 and 112 together.

I thank Deputies Lawless and Mairéad Farrell for their questions. It is proposed to develop a new Government data centre. This will be a purpose-built facility on State land and will be operated and managed by the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine on behalf of the State. The new Government data centre will be developed at the Government’s Backweston laboratory campus in Celbridge, County Kildare, with which Deputy Lawless will be familiar. This campus currently accommodates various facilities for the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine and the State laboratory.

This project is part of the Government’s ICT strategy, which is focused on creating ICT shared services to support integration across the wider public service in order to drive efficiency, standardisation, consolidation, reduction in duplication and cost control. The data centre will provide the foundation and platform on which our digital reforms and transformations will be built. It will also help facilitate a more environmentally-efficient use of technology across Government.

The objective of the Government data centre is to deliver high-quality data centre facilities which are fit for purpose and are capable of meeting the Government’s requirements now and in the future. In doing so, it will support and enable the Civil Service Renewal 2030 strategy, the Public Service Data Strategy 2019-2031 and the Government’s 2021 digital strategy and thereby provide a much better experience of Government services for the people of Ireland.

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