Indeed, from the time of St Patrick and later St Columba the power of the church and its evangelising mission would have been based largely around the monasteries which would have operated at some remove from the control of the Pope

The Pope ran the whole show after the Synod of Whitby. The Celtic Chuch had been gone, finished, abolished, an ex-church, for centuries before anybody, anywhere had the idea that any such thing as "national identity" might be a good idea.