ePower's director of development, Mr Paul Browne, will step down in April, the company said yesterday.
Mr Browne was seen as a crucial figure in the company and his move means the electricity firm controlled by Esat founder Mr Denis O'Brien will have shed more than half its 15 full-time staff this month. Seven workers were made redundant three weeks ago in what its spokesman described as a "right-sizing" process.
The spokesman said Mr Browne would remain on the board of the company and act as part-time consultant to it.
Mr O'Brien owns 70 per cent of ePower. Chaired by his former Esat colleague, Mr Leslie Buckley, the company is seen as a significant player in the partially liberalised market.
However, the company's board is known to be giving serious thought to leaving the market altogether. EPower's decision this month to consider "all options" follows a number of serious setbacks in the past year, which it has blamed on the regulatory regime.
It has also alleged the ESB was engaged in anti-competitive practices, though this has been strongly denied by the ESB.
Of Mr Browne, the spokesman said: "He's effectively part-timing. He is looking at other opportunities in the utilities sector for Leslie [Buckley] and Denis [O'Brien]."
Mr Browne's departure from ePower's full-time staff was not prompted by any unhappiness with his performance, the spokesman said. "It's got nothing to do with his performance at all and all to do with where the company finds itself in the current situation."
He said the move arose because the company had sold the 160 megawatts (MW) of virtual capacity taken up after an auction conducted last year by the Commissioner for Electricity Regulation, Mr Tom Reeves. EPower is known to have secured rights to supply up to 240 MW in that auction.
The auction was seen as a means of securing a customer base before market entrants such as ePower construct their own generation plant.
It wanted to build a power station near Navan but failed last year to secure planning permission for the project.
EPower then joined a Dublin project backed by the energy multinational BP Amoco and a US businessman Mr Larry Thomas. It has encountered a number of difficulties.
