I am totally in favour of wind energy. It is a valuable development and the use of wind as an energy source has become widespread not just in Europe but much further afield including the US and China.

The first real wind entrepreneur I met was Eddie O’Connor who, when he left Bord na Mona set up Mainstream Power. This company has been given the go-ahead for an enormous offshore development off the British coast.

Domestically, Irish wind energy is in a special place. Because we are blessed with excellent natural wind resources, the onshore sector has developed hugely on land. Colm McCarthy has drawn attention to the overall proportion of national power requirements that are now supplied from wind.

This development has not come about by accident. Informed observers of the sector say that modern wind turbines will produce a unit of electricity – a kilowatt hour at about 6-8c. This includes all the costs that have to be borne by the developer including depreciation of the turbine and associated works.

At the same time, the State has been giving forward-fixed price inflation linked contracts of approximately 14-16c/Kilowatt hour for 15 years into the future. No wonder there has been such pressure to develop further windfarms in Ireland when profits are at this level.

Of the total levy on electricity bills to pay for the national development of renewable energy, the wind sector has effectively scooped the pot in absorbing approximately €300m or 75% of the total money paid to the Irish industry by consumers. This has had the inevitable consequence of crowding out more farmer-accessible technologies such as on-farm digestion where there are only a handful of operators in the State. A further aspect of the wind turbine development has been the dominance of the State companies – the ESB and Bord na Mona. It seems extraordinary that they have been given such latitude to develop their wind energy subsidiaries while at the same time continuing to burn coal in Moneypoint in the case of the ESB and peat at the midlands stations in the case of Bord na Mona.

I had expected some recasting of national energy policy to be announced by Minister Denis Naughten at the Energy event in Gurteen, but again real policy decisions have been postponed.

SWS, the Bandon-based co-op, was a national leader in the whole area. Since it sold off its highly profitable wind energy division, farmers have been left without a real input into the development of national energy policy.