Aughinish Alumina saga comes to an end – O’Donovan

THE final outcome of a bid to block the lifting of US sanctions against a major Limerick employer has been described as “a huge sigh of relief” for all concerned workers by Fine Gael Minister Patrick O’Donovan.

Today, a vote in the US Senate to stop the lifting of sanctions against Russian energy giant Rusal – owner of Aughinish Alumina – failed to pass after it didn’t reach the required threshold of 60 votes.

Minister O’Donovan said after the vote, “hopefully this is the end of a long drawn out matter.”

The US Treasury originally announced its intention to remove sanctions from EN+ and Rusal, the parent companies of Aughinish on 18 December. This followed extensive negotiations between the Treasury and those companies about the terms of an agreement to reduce the ownership and influence of Mr Oleg Deripaska in and on those two firms.

Under the terms of the relevant legislation, the US Congress had 30 days to respond to that decision.

“The Democrats in the US Senate raised concerns about the US Treasury agreement with Rusal and EN+, in that they felt it was insufficiently tough on Mr Deripaska. That is why they sought to move a resolution through the Senate to block the de-listing,” the Fine Gael TD said.

“The motion, however, was not successful in the US Senate, as it did not receive the required 60 votes.

“This means that the path is now clear for the de-listing to take full effect this Friday evening, at which point Aughinish would no longer be impacted by the sanctions. This is obviously a huge sigh of relief for the hardworking employees and management of the firm and for all those involved in trying to safeguard its future.

“However, we need to await developments over the next day or so to ensure that the de-listing goes ahead as planned on Friday.

“The Irish Government has always understood the rationale behind the sanctions. However, our concern has always been that inadvertent damage to companies like Aughinish, and other firms across the EU, needed to be avoided.

“That is why we have worked so hard – especially through our Embassy in Washington and the Department of Business, Enterprise and Innovation in Dublin – to ensure that US legislators and authorities understood fully the ramifications that these sanctions would have on Aughinish.

“Our understanding of the agreement reached with the Russian firms concerned is that the right balance has been struck between punishing individuals whilst avoiding unnecessary collateral damage to the friends of US, like Ireland and Sweden.

“I understand fully though that the issues that gave rise to these sanctions are currently a source of division within the US political system. And we respect that there may be differences of opinion within Washington on how these sanctions are best applied.

“Our focus though has always been on protecting Aughinish Alumina and we hope that the vote tonight ensures that the firm can shortly return to full business-as-usual,” Minister O’Donovan added.