Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 20 November 2012

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine

Coillte Teoranta: Discussion with Chairman Designate

2:40 pm

Mr. Brendan McKenna:

We are very open to it. In the first instance, our enterprise division is primarily concerned with wind energy, telecommunications and land sales for commercial reasons. We own some very good sites which are extremely efficient in the context of wind energy. To date, we have entered into joint ventures in order to develop sites and facilities. We do not operate wind farms or at least we have not done so up to now. The company is determined to continue to develop appropriate sites with co-partners. We normally exit the process once a site has been developed and we then take the profit back into the company and invest it in another site. There is plenty of capital available for the right projects. The major part of the process relates to obtaining approval in respect of connection to the grid, etc. We are working to obtain such connection in respect of various sites at present. When connection is achieved, we develop the relevant sites with our co-partners.