Hard to follow you, but the process of law making has its own meta rules that we can talk about and that shape the nature of the resulting legal system. Responding to attempts to discuss these meta rules with "it is the law" is basically a category error, you're avoiding the meta discussion.

For example:

  • laws shouldn't be drafted to apply to a single person (bill of attainder)
  • laws shouldn't be applied retroactively (ex post facto)
  • laws shouldn't infringe on individual rights

I don't know enough about the EU/Irish law to be definitive about what is going on with Apple, but my gut says that the law was probably targeted such that few corporations could take advantage of it but not so much that it was just Apple and that the EU enforcement action should not be applied retroactively.