Server imports surged while data-centre building slowed

How much computer hardware does Ireland import?

We track "compute kit": servers, server parts and accelerator boards, and network equipment, by customs code. The series was flat for years, then took off. 2025's €12.2bn was 2.8× the 2015–23 average of €4.4bn.

How do we know the servers are coming in?

From trade declarations. Goods arriving from outside the EU are declared to Revenue on a customs entry; goods from other EU countries are reported by the trader on a monthly Intrastat return to the CSO. Each line carries a commodity code, a value in euro, a weight and a partner country. Eurostat publishes the result monthly in its Comext database. We pull Ireland's imports and exports for each code back to 2015 (latest month July 2026, published Sep 2026).

What it can't show: the importing company, the site, or whether the kit was switched on. The partner country is the last border crossed, not always the factory.

What's in the boxes?

"Likely inside" is our plain-English reading of each code, from general knowledge of how hardware is classified (unchecked). The other columns are Comext figures.

So is it GPUs or CPUs? Both, and customs can't separate them: GPUs have no code of their own. CPUs arrive inside complete servers. GPUs arrive either inside complete GPU servers or as boards and modules under "parts". Loose processor chips (code 854231) are left out: 76% come from Israel, which looks like chip-manufacturing trade, not data centres.

The clearest AI signal is value per kilo. A GPU server packs far more value into the same weight than a standard server. Imported servers were worth €175 a kilo in 2023, €391 in 2025 and €898 so far in 2026. Parts and boards went from €249 to €904.

Our reading. The jump in value per kilo, and in boards from Vietnam 25%, Taiwan 25%, South Korea 13%, Malaysia 12%, fits a shift to accelerator-heavy AI hardware. Customs can't prove it, but a 5.1× rise in value per kilo of servers since 2023 is hard to explain any other way.

Where does it go?

Some of it leaves again. Ireland exported €5.7bn of complete servers in the last 12 months, more than it imported. 94% went outside the EU, led by the UK 36%, US 22%. Parts go the other way, mostly to Hungary 40%, Poland 15%. In 2026 so far, net servers are −€2.5bn while net parts are €2.7bn and network kit €1.2bn.

Our reading. Part of Ireland's trade looks like assembly or distribution: boards come in, finished servers go out to Britain and the US. So "kept in Ireland" is the better measure of what reaches Irish data halls, and it is far smaller than the gross figure.

What stays, spread by size. Nobody publishes which site gets which servers. As an illustration, the table spreads the €4.8bn kept in Ireland over the last 12 months in proportion to each operator's 2025 grid draw (EPA annual environmental reports; national average 875 MW from the CSO).

New kit is more likely to go where operators still have room. The named campuses with the most unused contracted or stated capacity are Amazon AWS Cruiserath (151 MW), Microsoft Huntstown (150 MW), Meta Clonee (45 MW), Amazon AWS Belgard Tallaght (37 MW).

Ireland's place in Europe

For imports from outside the EU over the last 12 months, Ireland ranks second after the Netherlands for servers (14.6% of the EU total) and for server parts (24.6%).

But isn't data-centre building frozen?

New projects are. New-build data-centre planning applications fell from 69 before the CRU's November 2021 direction to 16 since. Yet data-centre electricity use rose 9.9% in 2025 (CSO).

The most likely destination is existing campuses and capacity contracted before 2021. Satellite images are consistent with that: at Microsoft's Huntstown site, the share of ground without vegetation went from 23% in summer 2025 to 65% in summer 2026 (Sentinel-2, indicative).

Our reading. The boom is happening inside the fences. Operators that hold pre-2021 grid capacity are filling it, and swapping older servers for denser, hungrier ones. That is why "Ireland has stopped building data centres" is misleading: it stopped approving new ones.

Is this a short boom before a cliff?

Not for servers, on the evidence so far. Data centres hold 2.0–2.4 GW of contracted grid capacity but drew an average of 875 MW in 2025, leaving about 1,025–1,405 MW unused (EirGrid; CSO). Average draw grew by about 91 MW a year over 2022–2025. At that pace the paper headroom lasts until somewhere between 2036 and 2040, and servers are replaced every few years whatever happens.

Three things could bring the squeeze forward:

• Contracts can't be used to 100%. Peaks, redundancy and cooling mean average draw stays well below contracted capacity. EirGrid's own median forecast for 2035 is 1,870 MVA of demand against about 2,400 MVA contracted, about 78% of it, so most of the headroom is expected to be used by then.
• The system limit is nearer than the contracts. EirGrid told the CRU that data-centre demand peaked at ~1,000 MW in late June 2026 and the 900 MW load-rejection limit was reached (with interconnector exports already cut).
• AI fills faster. In the Frozen scenario about 595 MW of the headroom fills by 2032, mostly AI densification in Dublin campuses. A faster AI fill would use it up sooner.

Our reading. The cliff has already happened, in buildings rather than boxes. Very few new campuses will connect before new rules are tested (the CRU's bring-your-own-power route; first connections from about 2029 in our Managed growth case). Hardware imports should stay high while legacy headroom fills. The gap opens in the 2030s if no new connections arrive by then: imports would sag towards the replacement level of about €2.1bn a year, and growth would go to the Nordics and Iberia. See the four scenarios and who holds the unused capacity.

Caveats

• Customs trade measures goods crossing the border, not goods installed in data centres.
• Ireland has large IT manufacturing and logistics flows (Intel Leixlip, contract manufacturers, Apple Cork); chips and parts are not all data-centre kit. Use net imports.
• Much extra-EU kit enters via the Netherlands and arrives in Ireland as intra-EU trade; partner shares show the last border crossed, not the factory.
• Confidential cells and sub-threshold intra-EU trade are missing; the latest months are revised.