A separate Irish Republic? Huh. Kind of odd, I'd say. Most Irish were pretty cool with the Queen and Parliament when I went there back in 2010 with my brother. We saw the
Irish Parliament in Dublin, but they weren't in session, unfortunately. You're right about them losing their language, but the resurgence in the 60s and 70s during the immigration crisis (they
still talk about it today!) did create the Irish schools (Gaelscoileanna), and conservative estimates place it about 980,000 using it daily by the early 90s, and about 1.6 million today. The good jobs being in the west and south may have helped, if I remember what Bridget O'Rourke was telling me (a pretty Irish girl I met there

). The companies were full of Irish speakers and to get ahead you pretty much had to speak Irish in a lot of those towns.
I have two questions on this supposed Irish Republic - would it be majority Catholic? The influx of Anglo-Scots, like TRH brought up, along with the surge from the colonies made a lot of Irish start thinking about their roots quite a bit, but the Church of Ireland seems to have grown more from all the incoming than the Catholic church did. It's maybe 1/3 of the population now, if we're generous. And the second question - would we still have the five provinces? Meath is pretty much the capital province with Dublin in it, but it got recreated for some reason, I don't really know all the nitty-gritty in that.
Okay, last comment. Could you imagine an Irish Euro though? I still have some Irish Pound coins in my coin drawer, with the Irish/English writing on it, kind of like Scotland has with Scots Gaelic. I just don't see them either going independent or going independent and then joining the EU. I thought I saw an alternate timeline where they actually joined the EU...ASB if you ask me! I got some Irish pounds while I was in Wales and a bit in London, but mostly Ireland. The whole collectors' series from 2001-2006 may have helped spread it around I think.