Aughinish Alumina exposes the danger of leaving strategic industry in foreign corporate hands. One of the State’s most important industrial assets, central to a variety of downstream supply chains, is controlled outside any Irish democratic economic strategy by a Russian oligarch and is now being made into a plaything of EU geopolitical interests.
The workers at Aughinish are now exposed to the consequences of this failure of economic policy. These are skilled industrial jobs with union organisation, apprenticeships, technical knowledge, and broader local economic importance. If sanctions disputes threaten production, the wider employment impact could involve up to 1,500 jobs when direct and indirect employment are considered.
Minister Peter Burke has said the Government cannot give workers firm reassurances and that Ireland will act in line with EU decisions if alumina is included in a future sanctions package. When state-controlled media like RTE fawns over “Ireland’s charm offensive” at a “highly successful” meeting of competition ministers at Dublin Castle because “politicians from across the EU reportedly loved having a pint, chatting and watching the match”, we might ask who is in control of our state’s economic policy?
Public ownership should be considered not as an emergency concession to EU pressure, but as a positive instrument of national economic development: publicly accountable, environmentally responsible, planned in the national interest, and protected from foreign pressure. However, the plant’s immediate future should not be dictated by EU geopolitical priorities: the last time we allowed a key sector to be dictated by EU preferences, we ended up with the 2008 bank guarantee.
Partisan · Patriotic · Internationalist
