This is the Guardian. It's J. Humphrey here from the High Performance Podcast.

I'm currently sponsored by Virgin Money, a brilliant and straightforward way to invest for your future.

Virgin Money's stocks and shares I sit is shaking up investing and you can get started from just 25 pounds. So are you ready to

kick some ISA? Search online for Virgin Money stocks and shares ISA to find out more.

Terms apply capital at risk Virgin Money is a trading name of Virgin Money Unit

Trust Managers Limited. Hi, I'm Annie, a host of the Green Room Podcast by Deloitte. We explore the topics that matter most in business.

Like one of our latest episodes, do elections change anything, with Caroline Flint, a former MP and government minister and Ian Stewart,

Deloitte's chief economist. In a year where more of us and ever across the globe will be

voting, how much does our vote really change? Find us wherever you got this

podcast just search the green room via Deloitte.

Welcome to the Guardian Long Reed, showcasing the best long-form journalism covering culture, politics and new thinking. For the text version of this and all our long reads go to the

Guardian.com forward slash long read.

Power grab. The hidden costs of Ireland's Data Center Boom by Jessica Trainer

In the Doldram days between Christmas and New Year, we take a family trip to see a data center.

Over the past two decades, data centers have become a common sight on the outskirts of Dublin and many other Irish cities and towns.

Situated in industrial business parks they are easy to miss.

But these buildings are critical to the maintenance of contemporary life.

Inside their walls stand rows and rows of networked servers.

Inside the servers, terabytes of data flow.

It's a seven minute drive from where we live now in Artean, Dublin, to the Klan Schock Data Center, situated in a business park behind Northside Shopping Center. Although we live close by, we haven't driven this way before,

and our route takes us through a number of the local authority estates that my husband lived in as a boy.

These estates are set on either side of a long

...