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Ireland’s planning appeals board upholds local permit for AWS’s Tullyneasky West facility, clearing a major hurdle for the tech giant’s first wholly-owned 320+ Tbps private transatlantic subsea cable.
In September 2026, An Coimisiún Pleanála (ACP), Ireland's national planning appeals board, formally rejected a local appeal and upheld planning permission for Amazon Web Services (AWS) to construct a subsea Cable Landing Station (CLS) at Tullyneasky West, near Clonakilty in County Cork.
The development includes demolition of two existing buildings and construction of a cable landing station, an ESB substation, a switch-room building, and external plant. The site is around five kilometres from Clonakilty.
The ruling ratifies the initial April 2026 approval by the Cork County Council, removing the primary land-use barrier for the eastern terminal of Fastnet—AWS’s landmark subsea project. Designed to connect Maryland, U.S., directly to County Cork, Ireland, Fastnet is AWS’s first 100% privately owned transatlantic subsea cable, engineered to supply over 320 Terabits per second (Tbps) of unmetered, high-throughput bandwidth for intercontinental cloud and AI workloads by 2028.
1. Fastnet System & Landing Station Profile
| Project Parameter | Specification & Status Details |
|---|---|
| System Name & Owner | Fastnet | 100% owned & operated by Amazon (via Amazon MCS Ireland Ltd) |
| Subsea Route | Maryland, USA (Eastern Shore) → County Cork, Ireland (Owenahincha Beach) |
| Design Capacity | Exceeding 320 Tbps across 16 Fiber Pairs (SDM optical architecture) |
| Target RFS Date | 2028 (Landing station construction slated to begin late 2026) |
| CLS Facility Location | Tullyneasky West, near Clonakilty, Co. Cork (~5 km inland from ocean landfall) |
| Facility Infrastructure | Custom CLS structure, ESB electrical substation, switch room, back-up generators, and fuel storage |
| U.S. Terminal Partner | Globalinx Data Centers (Virginia/Maryland CLS development) |
Globalinx Data Centers (Globalinx / GLX) is developing and operating the purpose-built Cable Landing Station (CLS) in Maryland that will host AWS's Fastnet cable. Globalinx executed a 25-year lease agreement with the Ocean City Council in late 2025. AWS, which originally approached city officials independently, partnered with Globalinx to serve as the facility's anchor tenant. The Globalinx CLS in Maryland is scheduled to be Ready for Service (RFS) in Q3 2027, ahead of Fastnet's targeted 2028 operational launch. Located approximately 170 miles from Northern Virginia's data center hub (Ashburn), the Globalinx CLS in Maryland provides direct, de-risked terrestrial backhaul while establishing Maryland's first-ever international subsea cable landing.
2. Appeals Ruling & Site Mitigation
The planning appeal brought by neighboring landowners cited concerns regarding visual impact, traffic generation, noise, and safety risks associated with fuel storage for backup generators. The ACP inspector's final report systematically dismissed these objections, paving the way for development:
Because the landing station operates unstaffed for daily routines, the board concluded traffic implications would be negligible post-construction, avoiding local road congestion.
The facility replaces two existing metal agricultural structures. Inspectors determined the low-profile industrial design does not exceed the visual footprint of the original buildings.
Horizontal Directional Drilling (HDD) at Owenahincha beach will run the fiber underground to avoid nearby Special Areas of Conservation (SAC) and preserve coastal tourism habitats.
3. Strategic Importance: Transatlantic AI Highway & Route Diversity
Fastnet serves a dual strategic purpose for AWS’s global cloud infrastructure:
Bypassing Transatlantic Chokepoints
Historically, transatlantic subsea fiber has clustered in legacy corridors—landing in New York/New Jersey in the U.S. and Cornwall, Bude, or Slough in the U.K. Fastnet creates an isolated physical path connecting Maryland (a first for the state) straight into West Cork, insulating AWS traffic from seismic, fishing, and geopolitical threats in traditional corridors.
Dedicated Transatlantic AI Pipe
As European enterprises scale Large Language Model (LLM) training and inference across AWS European availability zones (Dublin, Frankfurt, Zurich), Fastnet supplies dedicated, low-latency bandwidth to sync workloads directly with AWS’s major U.S. East Coast compute nodes without paying third-party transit fees.
4. Remaining Regulatory Hurdles & Construction Roadmap
With land-use planning permission fully secured at the national appeals level, AWS now moves into the final regulatory and construction phases:
- Maritime Area Consent (MAC): AWS must secure foreshore authorization from Ireland’s Maritime Area Regulatory Authority (MARA) to lay and bury the subsea cable 1.5 meters deep across the Irish territorial seabed.
- Station Construction (Late 2026–2027): Demolition of existing site structures at Tullyneasky West is scheduled for late 2026, with CLS building construction expected to take approximately 12 months.
- Community Benefit Fund: AWS has committed ~€150,000 to West Cork local initiatives, targeting STEM education and community development projects around Clonakilty.
- Target Service Activation: 2028 Ready for Service (RFS).
