Prior to the English/Normans Ireland was not a unified country was my point. It was a series of kingdoms.
It was not one state in modern sense in the 11th century because essentially nowhere in the world was a nation-state as per modern definition in the 11th century. But a country is more than a state. We had one language, one Brehon Law, one Gaelic culture and customs, various kings and high kings and meetings of high kings and the concept of Irishness already existed, seeing as the Irish word for the for the descendants of the Norse for example was Gael-Góidil, foreigner-Gael. And as can be seen from letters exchanged between Rory O'Connor and Diarmuid MacMurrough at the time of the Norman Invasions referencing the arrivals of 'armies of foreigners'. That would not have been the case as the various Irish thuatha considered each other as distinct as they considered people from outside the country.
And Ireland was pretty heavily implicated in that imperial ransacking business.
No it wasn't. That's akin to saying India was implicated was implicated in British Imperialism because some Indians joined the British Army to make a living for themselves. It is invariable the case that when a country gets invaded and colonised that many will see their best chance of survival as getting food and a steady wage by joining the colonised army. That is a result if imperialism and colonialism.
Irish people were in parliament;
A parliament which banned Irish Catholics from attending or voting or taking up any public office until the 1830s and then implemented various property restrictions after Catholic Emancipation to prevent Catholics from voting then on. It was only from the 1870s onwards that's any significant amount of representatives of the Irish people went to Westminster. If you knew your history would know before that it was the preserve of the Anglo-Irish Protestant Ascendancy, the people who were on the ground in this country implementing Britishoppression(And looking at your post history I imagine you identify strongly with that group)
were government ministers and occasional prime ministers.
Name me one British Minister or Prime Minister from Ireland who was not a member of the Anglo Irish Protestant Ascendancy?
You think William Petty the "2nd Earl of Shelburne" and Arthur Wellesley the "1st Duke of Wellington" were representative of the Irish people. They would not have even have consider themselves Irish in the way the mass of Irish subsistence farmers who rented land from absentee landlords stolen from their ancestors by the ancestors men like the two mentioned above.
Made up a chunk of the senior leadership of the army
I think you will find it was the exact opposite.
Your entire post has been to lay responsibility for the actions of the British and their minions in the Anglo-Irish Protestant Ascendancy at door of the Irish people they invaded, colonialised, stole land off and oppressed.
Would I be correct in saying that you are a Northern Unionist from a Protestant background by any chance?