It's worth remembering that in addition to not being one of the two historic mainland European powers whose languages happen to be the other working languages of the EU (and therefore unlikely to be jostling for supremacy in a post-Brexit EU), Ireland has been famously neutral during its existence as an independent nation. So I don't see what the problem is with characterising English as a "neutral" language in this context.

I _am_ Irish. Due to its small size, its small population, and comparative recency on the world stage, Ireland does not hold the same level of prestige or historical political clout in the EU as France, or Germany (or even the UK when it was a member).

You also forget about the Maltese. The combined population of the two would still make it a middling region of France like Grand Est or a somewhere between Rheinland-Pfalz and Hesse in the case of the German Länder.

Every country in the EU can choose one language as the national language. Ireland chose Irish.