The expertise and ecosystem that has built up in Ireland around data centres over the past 20 years puts the country in a strong position for future investment, according to Amazon vice president and country manager for the UK and Ireland.
Speaking to RTÉ Morning Ireland as the company marked 20 years of operation in Ireland, John Boumphrey said global demand for data centres is continuing to grow.
That has seen the company announce a number of large-scale investments in recent weeks, including an £8bn investment in the UK, a €15.7bn investment in Spain and a €10bn investment in Germany.
That had led to suggestions that Ireland had been overlooked, however figures published by Amazon today say it invested €3bn in Ireland last year alone.
That brought to €22 billion the amount invested by the company in Ireland since it first established its offices here in 2004.
This, according to Mr Boumphrey, was good news for the economy.
"We build vital infrastructure, we create jobs and we support small and medium-sized businesses," he said. "We've got more than 1,000 who sell on our sites around the world and exported, last year, more than €170m [worth of goods]."
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Amazon now employs around 6,500 people in Ireland working across a range of roles and businesses.
In 2022, Amazon opened a new warehouse and distribution centre in Dublin and next year, it will be launching a dedicated Irish website, Amazon.ie.
"For customers it will mean a choice of more products - we're going to have 100 million products available at launch," John Boumphrey said.
"That's going to be more products from more Irish brands, it also means - thanks to our partnership with An Post - that customers are going to get their deliveries even faster, and it's going to be easy to return products if you need to."
Amazon said more than 1,000 Irish SMEs sold around 5.5 million products on its site in 2023 - and Mr Boumphrey said the Irish site will allow them to reach new customers.
The company's AWS division provides cloud services to thousands of Irish entities, including large businesses such as Ryanair, Bank of Ireland and Stripe.
Many smaller retailers have warned however that competition from Amazon has put them under increasing pressure.
Michael Finucane is the owner of Chapters Bookstore in Dublin.
"Amazon is a fact of the market but their presence here hasn't been all good," Mr Finucane said.
"Retail is more than a product on a shelf, it is about community and supporting your community."
Mr Finucane said he tried selling books via Amazon but the fees charged by the site meant the prices he had to charge customers were too high.
"We have to compete with Amazon in ways they can't match, like offering an experience to customers," he said.
"There is no search engine or algorithm that can replicate the great experience of walking into a bookshop," he added.
Issues related to workers' rights, union recognition and staff surveillance have led to strikes and protests at Amazon facilities in the UK, US and parts of Europe.
In a statement today, the company said it is committed to investing in its employees, helping them boost skills, study for new qualifications and grow their careers.
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