CyrusOne's hope of opening their first Irish high security data centre on a 22.75-acre south Dublin site have suddenly got complicated, as Ireland's unresolved love-hate relationship with data centres gets ever more fraught.

Texas-based CyrusOne may be one of the world's biggest data centre providers, but it now has a fight on its hands with residents in Baldonnel, the Independent reports. Its plan for two data centres now faces hurdles as locals — whose homes will be surrounded by the site and its 32 diesel generators — raise objections.

The CyrusOne centre would be their first in Ireland: They currently operate from a 200K SF unit south-west of London, at Woking.

The Baldonnel plan was revealed days after Facebook disclosed plans for a 613K SF data centre on a 200-acre site at Clonee, north-west of Dublin on the Dublin-Meath border.

Last month Google said it will open a second south Dublin data centre at Grange Castle, representing a €150M investment.

The centre could be worth up to €55M a year to the city's economy, Silicon Republic reported.

The CyrusOne and Facebook moves come soon after new government guidance promising to smooth the planning process, which itself followed a decision by Apple to pull out of plans for a data centre at Athenry, County Galway, citing planning delays as their reason.

Data published by Host In Ireland in association with Bitpower found that more than €1.1B will be invested in data centre construction in Ireland in 2018, rising to €9B by 2021, Silicon Republic reported.