What should the quality reviewer do in this situation?

Situation is quality review before shipment decision.
The reviewer : What is the automation history of the project? Are we meeting the metrics?
QM : There was no automation in the project because the targetted automation tool wasn't available in time by initial codeline closure.
Second QM : The technlogy had proved in the past to be dificult to automate.

What should the reviewer do in such situation? Should she exempt the project modules with these constraints as valid and recommend release or should she stop release?