Minister for Enterprise Peter Burke has said he couldn’t offer any assurances regarding the operations of Aughinish Alumina.
A Department of Enterprise investigation into the Co Limerick refinery’s role supplying a key raw material used to make aluminium to Russia is expected “pretty imminently”, according to Burke.
Burke was speaking at Dublin Castle where he is chairing a meeting of EU competitiveness ministers as part of Ireland’s presidency of the EU Council of Ministers.
Pressed on whether there were any assurances for the workers, he said: “Obviously, it’s a very challenging circumstance. The company’s still operating, so, at the moment, no decision has been taken. So, at the moment, I can’t give any assurances in any regard. This is a European issue. Europe has policy responsibility for sanctions. We must remember that. And it’s clear … they have to take a very significant decision now.”
He added: “You’ll have a cohesive Government response in conjunction with the European Union when we have it.”
“Obviously, there are a thousand workers in the supply chain, and particularly in the wider economy, about 900 more that are very much linked into a sector, which has provided employment.
From the Shannon to Siberia: How alumina from a Limerick refinery enters Russia’s weapons supply chain
- Aughinish Alumina in Co Limerick supplies vast amounts of raw materials to Russian aluminium smelters, according to an investigation by The Irish Times and the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP).
- Read the full investigation here.
“But we all meet challenges, and we have to respond to those challenges with our values at our core as a country. And that’s very important to me as a minister, Ireland’s reputation.”
Burke also said later that nationalisation of the plant was not legally an option.
“It’s very important to say that I would not tolerate, or the Government will not tolerate if there’s a threshold of evidence that proves, essentially, the product is ending up in the Russian military complex,” he said this afternoon.
Asked about his comments on Friday morning when he said he couldn’t guarantee the jobs in Aughinish, Burke said that he couldn’t guarantee the jobs in any company in the private sector.
But he said that the State agencies always worked to support the workers in companies that were in difficulty.
He added: “I’d also say that there is no discussion about nationalisation. My advice clearly is that it’s not an option. The threshold would not be high enough under the Constitution … and other thresholds to be reached. So it’s not something that they’re exploring.”
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He said the investigation currently under way by his department “would establish if Aughinish breached European sanctions that are currently in place.”
He said the his department had been “liaising with the Swedish authorities and the Ukrainian authorities, I met the Ukrainian ambassador earlier this week in relation to some allegations about intelligence that they may have – and that’s essentially what has delayed the report slightly to get those clarifications to stress test what is on the table.”
He stressed that it was necessary to assemble the evidence, which was difficult when “you haven’t access to Russia”.
He indicated that the report would be published, and then the Government would discuss the issue with the European Commission. The subject did not come up in Friday’s meeting of EU competition ministers in Dublin Castle.
Meanwhile, Tánaiste and Minister for Finance Simon Harris has said that both Ireland and the wider European Union had to make sure they were not “inadvertently” assisting Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s “deplorable” war in Ukraine.
Speaking in Brussels, Harris said it was the job of the European Commission to draft and propose economic sanctions to constrain Russia’s ability to continue its four-year invasion in Ukraine.
“It is always important on any issue that a sanctions package understands the impacts that it can have on the European Union. That’s not a reason to not impose sanctions, but it is a reason to at least understand it,” he told reporters.
Reporting by The Irish Times and other media outlets detailed how Aughinish Alumina is exporting vast amounts of raw material, alumina, to smelters in Russia, that is then sold to a company supplying aluminium to Russian arms manufacturers.
The Government has come under significant pressure in Europe to show the Irish industrial plant is not playing a downstream role supplying the Russian war machine.
The Shannon estuary refinery is owned by Russian metals giant Rusal, which Swedish tax authorities recently concluded remains under the control of sanctioned oligarch Oleg Deripaska.
EU governments are expected to sign off on the bloc’s 21st round of sanctions in the coming days after several weeks of talks.
Attention will then turn to work drafting a 22nd package of sanctions. It is likely there will be pressure from the Baltic States and other governments to sanction or ban companies exporting alumina to Russia.
The commission previously decided against targeting alumina in earlier rounds of sanctions, due to the important role Aughinish Alumina plays as a supplier to European industry.
Concerns about the Co Limerick industrial facility had been raised before by US and EU authorities and “those issues addressed to their satisfaction”, Harris said.
Drafting a package of economic sanctions was a balancing act that had to weigh up the harm they would do to Russia and their potential impact on Europe’s supply chains, he said.
Aughinish Alumina has warned it could be forced to shut the plant in the event its exports were sanctioned by the EU.
Harris was speaking on Friday morning before chairing a meeting of EU finance ministers in Brussels, the first since the Government assumed the Council of the EU presidency.