The competition to build Ireland's first privately run power station hotted up yesterday when An Bord Pleanala granted planning permission for a £300 million (€381 million) generating plant in Dublin.

The station is being developed by the Northern Ireland power firm Viridian and CRH and could be built and ready to commence generating by mid-2002 if there are no further delays.

The 600-megawatt station at Huntstown, in north Co Dublin, has the capacity to supply one-sixth of the State's current energy needs.

The Irish electricity market will be partially liberalised on February 19th, and the new plant will be competing for large industrial electricity consumers with a 400-megawatt station which the ESB and Statoil plan to build in Ringsend, Dublin and other ESB plants.

The ESB/Statoil station received planning approval from An Bord Pleanala before Christmas and its developers are hopeful it will be fully operational by December, 2001.

Mr Denis O'Brien's Epower is also planning to lodge a planning application for a generating station next month. The firm has declined to identify the location for this plant, but confirmed it would have a capacity in the region of 400 to 600 megawatts.

CRH's group technical adviser, Mr Jim O'Brien, said the combined-cycle gas turbine station at Huntstown would be built in two phases, with the first capable of generating 250 to 300 MWs of power.

Fingal County Council's decision to grant planning permission for the CRH/Viridian plant had been appealed by local residents, who believed it would be totally inappropriate for a largely rural area with a dispersed residential population. Local resident Ms Joan Mulcahy said the community learnt of An Bord Pleanala's decision only yesterday. "We are still in shock," she said. A residents' meeting would have to be organised to decide if their objections to the plant would be taken further.

The residents were concerned that the four stacks on the proposed plant would be just 33.5 metres high and that harmful emissions might affect them as a result. Taller stacks would have posed a threat to air traffic, given the plant's proximity to Dublin Airport.

However, the station's developers said the site had been chosen because of its proximity to an ESB switching station on the national grid and a natural gas pipeline, which will provide the fuel for the plant.