Can I run an Irish Magento as my EU base for global expansion?

Yes, and Ireland is arguably the best EU base for global Magento:

• English-speaking, no localisation overhead for the team, English-language admin and ERP.
• EU VAT OSS hub, one Irish registration covers all 27 EU countries.
• Stripe HQ, first-class billing entity for global card processing, multi-currency settlement.
• Common-law jurisdiction, familiar for UK / US / AU customers and contracts.
• Low corporate tax (12.5%), favourable for global IP holding.
• AWS Dublin / Microsoft Azure IE, best EU latency to most markets.

Architecture-wise we build a multi-website Magento: one Irish backend, separate storefronts (e.g. store.ie, store.co.uk, store.de, store.com), shared catalogue + customer base, region-specific tax / payment / shipping rules. We’ve shipped this for two Dublin-HQ’d DTC brands.