People do NOT like it here if you even HINT that things that are done in England might be better. but will tell you in the same breath that things that are done in England might be better. There's this curious situation where there are people doing things in my field here that have been done in the UK for years and years but if they're done in an Irish context they're described as "innovative" and "unique" but if you report them as having worked in the UK context, people ask you where's the evidence that THE EXACT SAME THING could ever work in Ireland.
OK, this is the first post I've read on any thread recently that seems to be genuinely saying that Irish people are backward, stupid, defensive, and define themselves entirely in relation to England.
That is not my experience at all, and I left Ireland very recently and visit for extended periods frequently. (It would be very easy for me to maintain a voting registration if I didn't respect Ireland's need to restrict voting to residents.)
I don't know who you know, or what you do, but what you describe sounds like an attitude I thought had mostly been left behind - an inferiority complex combined with a constant need for external praise. "Oh we're a great little country really..."
I also don't recognise the hostility to emigrants, or sense that leaving the country to live elsewhere makes you less Irish.
As for "self-identifying" as Irish, if you are Irish born and bred? 
Sorry, no. She's Irish and if Ireland pisses her off she has as much right to say it as any of the other Irish people living anywhere in the world, including Ireland.
We are not such a shitty little nation that we have to all talk up Ireland and Irishness all the time.
How embarrassing and insulting it is to be told that Ireland is too crap to bear having Irish people ever say anything negative about it.