{"id":534746,"date":"2026-07-05T21:39:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-05T21:39:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/534746\/"},"modified":"2026-07-05T21:39:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-05T21:39:09","slug":"government-investigation-into-aughinish-alumina-not-stalling-minister-says-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/534746\/","title":{"rendered":"Government investigation into Aughinish Alumina not \u2018stalling\u2019, Minister says \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Government investigation to establish if some Aughinish Alumina<\/a> products are ending up as components in Russian military equipment is not \u201cstalling\u201d, a Government Minister has said. <\/p>\n

Minister of State Neale Richmond said a \u201cvery real investigation\u201d into the matter was taking place, under the direction of the Department of Enterprise <\/p>\n

\u201cUltimately, at the moment, alumina isn\u2019t a sanctioned product, but if it was, we\u2019ll react in kind as we have in the past,\u201d said Richmond, who was speaking on RT\u00c9\u2019s The Week in Politics. <\/p>\n

Asked why Sweden<\/a> and Estonia<\/a> had moved to curtail the products without waiting for an investigation, Richmond said: \u201cWe have an investigation on trade flows coming from our jurisdiction. We have a legal, as well as a moral obligation, to make sure that investigation is based on very real charges and I\u2019ve no issue to date on the credibility of the charges.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf there is a breach of sanctions, we will absolutely work to move on that or . . . it may feed into the fact that maybe we need to update the sanctions.\u201d<\/p>\n

Richmond dismissed suggestions the Government was reluctant to conclude the investigation. He said: \u201cWe have a very real investigation. It\u2019s not stalling. <\/p>\n

\u201cVery clear charges were made by The Irish Times<\/a> [investigation<\/a>]<\/a>. We work with the European Commission to actually find these intricate trade links, because ultimately alumina isn\u2019t a sanctioned product.” <\/p>\n

Cian O\u2019Callaghan of the Social Democrats, speaking on the same programme, said it was clear Aughinish was a significant contributor to the Russian military\u2019s aluminium-production needs.<\/p>\n

He said: \u201cThere\u2019s 107 different companies in Russia, military companies, defence companies that take their supply of alumina from those smelters that Ireland is supplying. So, this is this is very serious. The Government should act on it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Asked if compromise was possible, especially for the 450 jobs in Co Limerick, Sinn F\u00e9in\u2019s Louise O\u2019Reilly said this could happen if a serious effort was made to seek new markets unconnected to Russia. <\/p>\n

\u201cIf we walked out of here and stopped people on the street and asked them if they were content that any company based here in Ireland had any part of Putin\u2019s aggression against Ukraine, they would say absolutely not,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we do really need to see is the exploration of other markets and I think nothing at this stage should be off the table. I am also conscious that there are nearly 500 jobs and people will be watching TV thinking, \u2018is my job going to be safe?\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think the Government can give that reassurance that they will actively look for other markets and also work across the European Union to protect the jobs, but also to ensure that that no resources are taken from Ireland and used as part of Putin\u2019s war machine.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Government investigation to establish if some Aughinish Alumina products are ending up as components in Russian military…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":534747,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[163884,61,60,1396,127931,43,3589],"class_list":["post-534746","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-aughinish-alumina","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-limerick","tag-neale-richmond","tag-news","tag-russia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/534746","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=534746"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/534746\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/534747"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=534746"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=534746"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=534746"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}