Professor Graham Butler:

I will be brief. The Commission is a surveillance authority as well as the legislative authority. It can receive complaints from individuals and it can take up of its own discretion the extent to which an infringement of the common commercial policy, CCP, has occurred. As Professor Tridimas noted earlier, for issues like the substantive one here when the State is very clearly trying to fulfil its international legal obligations, the Commission might exercise a significant degree of caution. Just because the Commission may not act does not eliminate the possibility for proceedings to ultimately end up before the EU court anyway, given that issues can arise for the Irish courts which then necessitate sending a case to the EU.