The joint venture between National Toll Roads (NTR) and Eirtricity will submit a proposal to develop a #75 million wind farm 12 miles off the coast of Wexford in the third quarter of the year, NTR chief executive Mr Jim Barry said. Speaking after NTR's annual general meeting in Dublin yesterday, Mr Barry said the group would begin development of the 60 megawatt wind farm in the third quarter of 2002 if it received the go-ahead from the Department of the Marine.
Mr Barry said the group had been awarded the rights to the 24kilometre sandbank off Arklow and had spent £2.5 million (#3.2 million) so far developing the proposal it will submit. He added that the proposal would involve installing up to 200 80-metre pylons. Further north, the Electricity Supply Board has recently been given a foreshore licence to determine the suitability of a #250 million wind farm on the Kish Bank, just outside Dublin Bay, and the Bray Bank off Bray. It is understood the NTR proposal is far more advanced. Mr Barry said NTR had an 18-month to two-year lead time over its competitors.
On the group's tollroad business, Mr Barry said short lists for the first two public/private partnership road projects - the #420 million Kilcock-Kinnegad motorway and the #200 million Waterford bypass - were likely to be drawn up in July. He added that given the length of the tendering process and the construction time involved, it would be 2005 before either of these projects was completed. NTR has joined forces with the Spanish group Dragados and engineering groups Ascon and Nuttall to pitch for these roads projects. Mr Barry said there was strong competition for these projects with 12 consortiums having made prequalification submissions for the Waterford project and 11 for the Kilcock-Kinnegad project.
Mr Barry said construction work on the #22 million second Westlink bridge across the M50 west of Dublin would begin in about six weeks' time.
At yesterday's meeting, chairman Mr Richard Hooper was asked by one shareholder to comment on the £78,000 the company is alleged to have paid to former Fianna Fail TD Mr Liam Lawlor. Mr Hooper declined to comment on the affair, but said the company had supplied the Flood tribunal with all the information it had sought. "It would be totally inappropriate to make any further comment today," he said.
NTR is an unlisted public company, 38 per cent owned by the Roche family's Conor Holdings company. Fifty per cent is held by institutional investors and the remainder by a couple of hundred private investors. The shares last traded at #8.40 on an over-the-counter market operated by Davy Stockbrokers.
