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Apple announced plans in February 2015 to build the facility in
a rural location in the west of Ireland to take advantage of
green energy sources nearby, but the project has faced a
two-year delay due to planning objections.
In a meeting on Thursday, Cook did not commit to going ahead
with it, Varadkar told state broadcaster RTE.
"We didn't get a start date, or a definite commitment or
anything like that," said Varadkar, who is on a tour of the
United States to meet investors, adding he had told Cook that
the government would do "anything within our power" to
facilitate the resumption of the project.
Ireland relies on foreign multinational companies like Apple for
the creation of one in every 10 jobs across the economy and sees
major investments such as data centers as a means of securing
their presence in the country.
Apple did not respond to an e-mail query asking about whether it
was committed to the project.
A similar Apple center announced at the same time in Denmark is
due to begin operations later this year and Apple in July
announced it would build its second EU data center there.
The government has said it is considering amending its planning
laws to include data centers as strategic infrastructure, thus
allowing them to get through the planning process much more
quickly.
(Reporting by Conor Humphries; editing by Alexander Smith)
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