Well, if you don't want Ireland, who do you want as his replacement? Look at the Jets. Tannenbaum was a capologist without a personnel background. So Rex Ryan was essentially picking the players. And when they fired Tannenbaum, they couldn't give away the job because 1) no GM would want to work with Rex Ryan; 2) they were in cap-hell and couldn't re-sign any of their own players. So they replaced Tannenbaum with yet another capologist from the Seahawks so de facto it will be Rex Ryan picking the players.
I think the rapport between Philbin and Ireland on personnel decisions is a relationship worth preserving at this point. People complain about Ireland but there are many teams in far worse situations around the league. To me, it was Parcells and Sparano that were the problems all along.
Sorry, the "who do you hire instead" excuse is the worst of all excuses, by far. If you own your own business, do you keep a ****ty employee just because don't know who is out there to replace him? Only if you are really bad at running your business. Further, there are plenty of options throughout the NFL.
Also, Philbin is not Ryan.