Pat Rabbitte, Ireland’s pro-renewables energy minister, also said it is “difficult to envisage” such a scheme taking off without the utilisation of state-owned lands, in a possible nod to Bord na Mona’s proposal last year to use its peatlands in the Irish East Midlands to build an initial 1GW of wind capacity for export to the UK.

Rabbitte added, however, that it is “not [his] job to favour one developer or another”.

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