This report outlines the widespread costs and disproportionate drain on public resources resulting from data centre expansion in Ireland. The economic contributions of data centres to the Irish economy are exaggerated, with headline figures failing to account for where value accrues and who benefits from it. The development of data centres in Ireland represents a key means through which the “costs” of industrial development are socialised and its benefits privatised, especially in the context of energy transition. These costs are not just in the form of energy and water use, or inflated household bills, but the opportunity costs involved as alternative, socially necessary and climate resilient development pathways are foreclosed.