A spokesman for the company refused to comment, however, on whether it would purchase an existing player such as Airtricity or would simply invest in selected projects. Wind Partners does not involve itself in the development of farms.

"We have nothing specific at the moment but we do both. We often get involved in developments with local partners but equally we would acquire some projects at a later stage or we'd acquire companies as we did with Enersis in Portugal, " he said.

He said the company had been discouraged from investing in Ireland in the past due to the "stop-start" nature of the market here.

"You had the whole situation with the moratorium on the development of new wind farms several years ago but the new proposals regarding renewables in Ireland look more interesting for us."

Babcock & Brown is now the world's fourth-largest owner of wind farms, having spent 910m in recent months to acquire wind power assets in the US, Spain and Portugal.

Despite starting to invest in wind less than two years ago, it now has interests in 33 wind farms with the capacity to generate more than 1,200 megawatts of power. It plans to expand this capacity by another 4,000MW.

The spokesman said, however, that any Irish investment would be small in terms of its overall global operation.

"The Irish market is small compared to Portugal, for instance, where we have 500 megawatts in wind farms there. The entire Irish grid is only around 5,200MW."