Conor Gallagher

And there's a very good chance Ahlis Aluminum is going into these things.

So it's very possible, if not likely, that alumina from County Limerick is on both sides of the war in Ukraine, which, yeah, just underlines, I guess, how complicated and fraught the issue is.

Yeah, we, you know, as part of our investigation, we spoke to experts in alumina and the manufacturer of aluminium.

And they said that it's not like, you know, alumina from Aachenis goes into this pot, which is used, it goes to this company.

Generally, you fill up your tanks, your silos with alumina from different places, and then that will all go into the smelter to make aluminium.

So it's not like there'll be a mixture of different materials all through the process.

So it's not a direct line from Limerick to, you know, one single cruise missile, say.

Is alumina a sanctioned material?

No, aluminium, finished aluminium is a sanctioned material.

Alumina, the raw material, strangely enough, is not.

That's partly because Europe depends on it so much, partly because the Irish government lobbied extensively, and not just the Irish government, a few other EU governments lobbied extensively for it to be excluded from sanctions lists.

So as the government has been repeatedly pointing out, it's not a sanctioned material.

There are those that say that's exactly the problem.

We considered that when we were doing our investigation.

And we actually spoke, or one of my Estonian colleagues spoke to a chemist there who said, no, it almost certainly wouldn't be likely to get an exact match.

And even if you did, it would be in terms of probability.

So it might be like, oh, there's 60%.

Yeah, you could maybe trace it to the bauxite, which is mine pulled from the ground in these mines, which cause huge environmental damage.

But that's another issue in Guinea and Brazil.

But that bauxite could go to Agnes, but it also could go to smelters in Canada, in India, in China.