It will be several weeks yet before the Irish Hospitality Industry Alliance (IHIA) has received comprehensive legal advice on the recently-published legislation outlawing smoking in all workplaces.
This includes a ban in pubs and restaurants from January 26th.
The alliance, a powerful lobby group of bar owners and hoteliers, threatened to mount a legal challenge to the new regulations within hours of their publication last week.
It has since referred the regulations to lawyers to seek their advice on a possible judicial review.
However, the alliance's spokesman, Mr Finbar Murphy, said yesterday it cannot get full legal advice until guidelines for implementation of the ban are published next month.
The guidelines are being drawn up by the recently-established National Implementation Committee, which includes representatives of the Office of Tobacco Control, the Health and Safety Authority, environmental health officers, health boards and the Department of Health.
Their guidelines are due to be published at the end of November.
Mr Murphy said that it was therefore likely to be close to Christmas before the alliance had obtained "proper qualified legal opinion".