Irish insturmental music is obviously huge in a way that English isn't, and it has been institutionlised via things like Comhaltas. It would be nice if English music had anything like that profile.

However, I'm not sure that extends to song in quite the same way. I could name hundreds of popular english traditional singers all plying their trade (Eliza Carthy, Jon Boden etc) whereas it's a lot harder for me to think of many Irish counterparts.

That might be cos I simply don't get to hear of them over here (in England) but it doesn't strike me that Irish folk song is significantly healthier than English in terms of numbers or profile of practitioners. I could be wrong...