the Irish setup where everybody takes O'Neill as the bible and nothing ever gets formally added to it.
Now there speaks someone with no knowledge whatsoever about the current traditional music scene in Ireland.

My only experience of the music scene in Ireland was 30 years ago, which is why I wasn't talking about it.

There are any amount of tune collections in Ireland these days, the difference is that Irish musicians learn the tunes at home, and don't take them to the session.

Or they use YouTube and TheSession. If they're learning at home how could you tell? But the role of those smallish not-trying-to-be-canonical collections is a BIG difference. You can't go to a Scottish tune session with a lot of older players in Edinburgh and NOT know what sources they've got their tunes from. (Younger players are less predictable).

Ireland doesn't have "music buffs", they have musicians who play traditional music

Why would anybody care which label was used?

The OP was asking about the UK.

In case you hadn't noticed, Irish music is played here too, and my comparison was with the Irish music scene in the UK.