The ESB yesterday pledged to work as quickly as possible to lift its moratorium on new wind power connections to the national grid.

"We will try our damnedest to lift this moratorium as fast as we can," said Mr Kieran O'Brien, managing director of ESB National Grid, the power grid operator, at a crowded public forum.

The ESB asked for a moratorium after a surge in new contracts for wind power this year created what it called "concerns about maintaining the stability, security and reliability" of the power system. The recent contracts will not be affected by the moratorium.

Mr O'Brien's remarks failed to stem criticism from members of the wind power industry, who said the ESB should have acted sooner to address the problem.

"They have known for a long time that wind generators would become part of the mix," said Mr Martin McAdam, operations and development manager at Airtricity. "What we are saying here is that there has been no real planning."

The ESB said it had made industry aware of problems with wind power as long ago as 1999.

Wind power poses several unique problems for power grids. The amount of power wind turbines generate depends on how hard the wind is blowing.

If a group of turbines suddenly produces too much or too little power, it can cause problems across the network.

ESB officials said it would take at least six months to develop a new grid code for wind power.

Mr O'Brien said wind generators had found it difficult to comply with the existing grid code, which is designed to ensure that all energy providers have the proper procedures in place to respond to sudden changes in the system.

He said industry and regulators would have to work together to develop and test new models for monitoring wind turbine performance. Several manufacturers present at the meeting pledged to share their modelling software.

ESB also said wind energy providers needed to ensure that wind forecasting and other measures were in place to allow them to reduce the amount of power sent to the grid in extremely windy weather and at other times of peak supply.

Turbine manufacturers said the new turbines currently on the market already contained such technologies.

Ireland's situation is complicated by its island status. Although the Republic and the North share the same power grid, it has only one link to the British mainland, through Scotland.

Linking to other power grids spreads risk and provides increased stability.

Mr O'Brien said there had been some discussion of building another link between the Irish and British grids in Wales, but he said European Union legislation passed in 2000 prevented the ESB from negotiating new interconnection agreements.

"The big question is: why didn't we have this meeting in 1999?" said Mr Paddy Teahon of the Irish Wind Energy Association.