Foynes (Ireland) (AFP) – Down a country lane on Ireland’s west coast, a sign outside Europe’s largest alumina refinery greets visitors in English, Irish — and Russian. The Aughinish Alumina industrial complex, on the river Shannon estuary in County Limerick, employs some 500 people, and is at the centre of a political dispute pitting support for Ukraine against local jobs. The plant is owned by Russian aluminium giant Rusal, which Swedish tax authorities recently concluded remains under the control of sanctioned oligarch Oleg Deripaska. It has fuelled calls for Ireland to halt exports to Russia, although alumina exports are not currently subject to European Union sanctions.
Production in Ireland was launched in 1983, and the company says it produces around 1.9 million tonnes of alumina a year at the plant. But scrutiny of the refinery intensified after a March investigation by the Irish Times daily and a consortium of journalists, the OCCRP, alleged that raw material shipped from Aughinish to Russia was processed into aluminium sold to a Moscow-based trader supplying Russian arms manufacturers. The report triggered a government probe, but Enterprise Minister Peter Burke said on Friday that “no adverse findings” against the refinery had shown up. The investigation was however unable to determine where alumina was traded once it entered Russia because of a lack of internal Russian trade data, he added.
Official Irish data published earlier this month showed half the refinery’s alumina exports in the first quarter went to Russia, up from 43 percent last year, while 40 percent went to the EU.
– ‘Ban the exports’ – Ukraine says the exports raise concerns that economic activity from Ireland could be helping sustain Russia’s war effort. “Every supply of strategically important raw materials that strengthens Russia’s capacity to sustain its aggression raises serious questions,” the Ukrainian embassy in Dublin told AFP. Speaking in Kyiv on Thursday alongside Irish prime minister Micheal Martin — during a visit to mark Ireland’s six-month rotating EU presidency — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky welcomed Ireland’s engagement on the issue. “It is important that appropriate steps are taken to ensure that the Russian war receives no support whatsoever,” he said.
The dispute has exposed an increasingly awkward tension between Ireland’s outspoken support for Ukraine and its lack of intervention at one of Europe’s last major Russian-linked industrial assets. Militarily neutral Ireland has been among Ukraine’s strongest political supporters within the EU while insisting it is fully committed to sanctions against Russia. Ukrainian flags fly alongside those of Ireland and the EU outside the Irish parliament in Dublin. Beneath the flags, opposition lawmaker Patricia Stephenson told AFP the government’s position was increasingly difficult to reconcile. “The whole thing around Aughinish doesn’t match, we need to be banning those exports,” she told AFP.
Stephenson said ministers should work with the EU to secure alternative markets for the refinery’s alumina while preparing contingency plans, including examining nationalisation if necessary. Ministers have stressed the refinery’s strategic importance as a major employer in rural western Ireland and a key supplier to aluminium smelters in Sweden and France which in turn supply European heavy industry. Aughinish said in a statement on Friday that its alumina had “no connection whatsoever to the Russian military supply chain”. And it vowed to order an “independent, third-party verification by a competent global company, who will monitor the alumina flows from Aughinish and subsequent export out of Russia”.
In Foynes village across the estuary from the refinery, where a port handles its exports, local businessman John Cassels said the dilemma was clear. “Nobody wants to see local jobs lost,” he told AFP. “But we shouldn’t be sending the stuff to Russia.”
– ‘Nefarious purposes’ – Limerick city mayor John Moran estimates between 2,000 and 3,000 people in the region depend directly or indirectly on the refinery. “But if products are finding their way into Russia and used for nefarious purposes, we have to find alternative markets,” he told AFP. Attention has now shifted to Brussels after the European Parliament adopted a non-binding resolution calling for an end to EU alumina exports to Russia. The Irish government’s findings will now be shared with the European Commission before any decision on further action.
Foreign policy analyst Edward Burke of University College Dublin said the Aughinish controversy reflects a failure by Ireland to react to earlier sanctions. Weeks after Russia’s invasion in 2022, Australia banned alumina exports to Russia and imposed sanctions on the businessman Deripaska. “We’re four years too late, this was entirely predictable,” Edward Burke told AFP.
© 2024 AFP
