That only points to the desire of Ireland at the time to integrate tighter. I agree, however, that at some point in the 70’s the EU had ambitions far beyond a customs union.
Empires are monarchies that rule over many diverse nations. The EU is a multi-ethnic bureaucracy, not monarchy. It will therefore, follow a path of self-destruction typical for bureaucracies as the bureaucrats learn to gratify themselves at the expense of those who work for a living. Further, a monarchy has a unifying idea that attracts nations (for example, industrialization, social justice or Orthodoxy). The EU does not have that, beyond some cheap platitudes.
No it does not. Ireland’s war of independence was not supposed to lead to a dependence upon a different external entity. I do not know just how Eamon de Valera’s government sold this under that referendum (sounds too much like the Lisbon Treaty and Nice Treaty revotes), but he and that government sold out the Irish people.
Empires do not have to be led by monarchies; I do not know where you got that from. The Roman Empire established the title of “Imperator” specifically to evade royal connotations, of course. The British Empire was led by a non-royal dictator (Oliver Cromwell) from about 1649 to 1658. There was nothing royal about Hitler, Stalin or Mao either.