A £50 million (€63 million) gas turbine order for the ESB/Statoil power plant project at Ringsend, Dublin, will only be sanctioned by the Minister for Public Enterprise, Ms O'Rourke, on condition that the ESB sells its stake if competition requires it. Additional power plants, such as the Ringsend project due for completion by 2002, are necessary to avoid power black-outs.

The Minister has told the ESB that permission to proceed with spending up to £50 million on a turbine is dependent on it being willing to "sell its interest . . . in any generating station to be built at Ringsend".

The letter from Ms O'Rourke to the ESB, proposing the arrangement, has been made public on the Attorney General's advice. The arrangement, described as a "carrot and stick" measure by Ms O'Rourke yesterday, has been arrived at by the Department as it conducts an inquiry on whether the ESB is abusing its dominant position.

It follows complaints made by independent power producers who wish to enter the partially de-regulated market next year, that the State company has withheld information on the transmission system and connection charges, that it may have strayed beyond its statutory remit on its expenditure programme at Ringsend, or that its "extension of a dominant position" is anti-competitive.

"Without presuming that all such representations are accurate, I attach considerable importance to ensuring that neither the ESB nor the State are exposed to litigation risks," she states in her letter to the ESB.

She states the ESB had taken two months to reply to a letter in September requesting information on deregulatory issues. She said the ESB's representations of urgency on "the risks of power cuts in the winter of 2001/2002" had to be considered in the light of the two-month delay.

The reply of November 24th, she says, "is couched in general terms and does not deal fully with all the requests for information in the letter of 22 September, 1999".

Permission by Ms O'Rourke to proceed with full capital expenditure on the Ringsend project is also dependent on her Department receiving "satisfactory replies" to her September letter.

Meanwhile, ESB/Statoil are waiting on planning permission before proceeding with the 400 megawatt (MW) gas plant.

For the moment, Ms O'Rourke has also withheld her consent to the ESB proceeding with the £17 million Shellybanks-Carrickmines transmission line project in Dublin saying the resources deployed could prejudice transmission work necessary for competing projects. An ESB spokesman said yesterday the issues would be considered at its board meeting next Monday.

Mr David de Casseres, commercial director of Viridan, which, in a joint venture with CRH, is proposing to build a 600 MW gas-fired plant at Huntstown, said his company had complained about the ESB's slowness in releasing information it needed to present terms to potential future customers.

The Labour Party spokesman on Public Enterprise, Mr Emmet Stagg, accused Ms O'Rourke of engaging in "a publicity barrage" against the ESB.