Details were announced yesterday of a proposal for the State's first offshore wind farm. The development, off the Co Wicklow coast at Arklow, would involve the construction of 200 windmills, 10 kilometres offshore, at a cost of £500 million.
Eirtricity, the firm behind the proposal, estimates the wind farm would generate enough energy to power 500,000 homes. Dr Eddie O'Connor, managing director of Eirtricity, said the company had already been granted a prospecting licence by the Department of the Marine and the next step was to obtain a foreshore licence, which would allow the work to go ahead.
Dr O'Connor said he hoped work could begin next year. An environmental impact assessment is being prepared which would include the likely effects on marine life, transport, currents, air quality and climate.
Green Party MEP Nuala Ahern pledged Ireland would have the EU Commission fully behind it if the State could produce "green" electricity competitively.
Ms Ahern said that EU subsidies should be shifted from the nuclear and coal industries to get wind power "over the infra structural hump".
Stephen Newton and Paul Galvin of Birdwatch Ireland said they would like to see more data on the site before it went ahead. They said they were not against wind farms but could not evaluate the situation as Eirtricity was only three months into its study of the region's bird life.
"There may well not be a problem at this site but there is the possibility that birds would avoid a wind farm area. If this is a feeding area, then there could be loss of habitat," said Mr Galvin.
Meanwhile, wind could provide up to a third of the electricity needs of Ireland - North and South - within five years, according to a report published today.
Harnessing the energy of the power of the wind around the coast could provide 32 per cent of the island's predicted consumption by 2005, it said.