This analysis is largely drawn from the book Winning Pawn Structures by Baburin (1998), which the blog author credits. Most chess books do not keep their relevance past 5 years, so it's a great testament to the quality of the book that it's still highly esteemed today.

Baburin is a Russian-born Grandmaster who came to Ireland around 1993. You might think the popularity of this book would have led to a generation of Irish players who specialized in IQP positions. But instead the opposite seemed to happen: it bred a generation who assumed their opponents had read the book, felt they hadn't mastered it themselves, and avoided those positions with both Black and White.

A contributing factor was that this book was more difficult for young intermediate players to grasp than an openings manual, where you can improve your results just by memorising a few extra lines. Perhaps also that there just wasn't the same culture of chess and chess education that other European countries had: Irish players just weren't used to being taught how to play the middlegame.