The construction of a new data centre owned by Facebook has started in Ireland.

The ‘Cloone Data Centre’ will be powered by wind energy.

The firm aims to power 50% of the infrastructure with clean and renewable energy by the end of 2018.

Facebook’s founder Mark Zuckerberg claims it will be one of the “most advanced and energy efficient data centres in the world”.

The project is expected to come online in early 2018.

Mr Zuckerberg added: “One interesting engineering detail is that we’re cooling the facility with outdoor air but because this is near the Irish Sea we’ll be using an indirect air cooling process to filter the salt from the air.”