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Paul,

We've a number of utilities, ESB being the main one, that are classified as "essential utilities" and they have to be provided with land for free as part of any development. It's part of the conditions for granting planning permission.

So, not only would you not get power if you didn't agree to this, you also wouldn't get planning permission to build.

ESB also benefits from specific legislation that allows it to cross private lands without all that much fuss, provided they comply with health, safety and planning laws.

During the 1920s/30s when the ESB was first set up there were a load of problems with network rollout as people obstructed them legally. So, the state gave them some significant powers to access/cross and install equipment on private land with very little difficulty. You go for a judicial review of their decision, but in general, they got their way!

In contrast, P&T (the old phone company) had to stick to running cables along roads.

The rules about screening / RCDs and handlamps are Health and Safety Authority (HSA) or ETCI (Electrotechnical Council of Ireland) rules. Not just ESB guildelines.

Bear in mind though that ESB also acted as the electrical safety regulator and setter of technical standards too until that role was moved into the ETCI in 1972. ESB's still one of the major members of that organisation and provides significant funding and technical resources to it (including personnel).

We've opened the market to competition and ESB is now up against other operators and generators, but it remains to be seen how / if it will be privatised.

We had a situation where the Commission for Energy Regulation (CER) prevented ESB from developing new generation capacity as it was trying to encourage other players to come into the market. However, they didn't come in quick enough nor did they provide the necessary capacity. So, they've now done a deal where ESBs allowed to expand existing facilities in exchange for selling older plants' sites off to compeditors. The idea is that the sites and network connections can be used by new entrants to speed up their roll out, while ESB can get on with building new capacity.

We came very close to having not enough generation capacity to keep up with demand due to that administrative decision!!

ESB has now been 'unbundled' into seperate units:

1) Eirgrid (National Grid Operator)
2) ESB Networks (Local distribution HV/MV/LV networks and metering)
3) ESB Generation (Generation)
4) ESB Customer Supply (retail sale of power to end users)
5) ESBi (Consulting Engineers)
6) ESB International - Overseas operations

(3), (4), (5) and (6) are likely to be privatised, however 1) and 2) are due to remain as public utilities.

There is still an argument though that it works very well as a publically owned company and turns healthy profits and keeps costs down so if it ain't broke why fix it?!