Cork’s pharmaceutical industry, vital to the local economy, is at risk as US trade policies threaten small towns reliant on the sector
www.theguardian.com
Just across the bay from the historic town of Cobh, the last port of call for the Titanic in 1912 on her ill-fated maiden voyage, lies the source of some of the world’s biggest life-savers and givers.
Sildenafil, the active ingredient in Viagra, medicinal compounds for the treatment of cancer, rheumatoid arthritis, psoriasis, Crohn’s and Parkinson’s disease, all are manufactured within two miles of the deep port of Ringaskiddy in County Cork.
On the main road from Ringaskiddy to Carrigaline, on the back road to Curraghbinny, or down towards the white beaches of Lough Beg, the mammoth windowless plants of Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson and their private wind turbines are the main attractions.
After more than 50 years, however, it is all under threat after Donald Trump
accused Ireland of stealing America’s pharmaceutical industry and vowed to “force” US companies, jobs and taxes to return home.
On Tuesday night, he renewed the threat, promising a “major tariff” that would send the pharma industry “rushing back” to the US, sending stocks of those US companies in
Ireland, across Europe and India down.
This has concentrated the minds of local politicians, who have called on the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, to visit the area. She met pharmaceutical companies in Brussels on Tuesday to hear that tariffs could “expedite” a shift to the US.
“If Pfizer and the others closed … the collateral damage would be huge,” said John Twomey, something of a local historian and treasurer of the local Gaelic Athletic Association in Shanbally, a tiny village a two-minute drive from Pfizer’s entrance.
“Half the place would be blown to bits, all the workers, the subcontractors, from the guys supplying the toilet rolls, to the farms supplying meat for the canteens.”
