By and large, the Commission can take no action unless a directive agreed by the Council and the Parliament empowers it. For example, Ireland had a row with the Commission about budgets. It was a row about a decision made by ECOFIN that certain guidelines would be complied with and Ireland, as one of the countries that agreed to those guidelines, felt it was not in its interests to comply with them at that point. The Commission could only act on the basis of the power given to it by the treaties or the Council. The Commission has an important role in policing the implementation of agreed policies. There are many examples of how this has been dealt with in Ireland and elsewhere.