They clutter the article; perhaps the reference to them should be deleted too. I'll look into it. As for the order of the flags, I would have thought it obvious.  
 Firstly, the Irish State has been robbed of the use of its official name, IRELAND, by certain Wiki editors; then there are repeated attempts to have the Union Jack appear as the top/largest/first flag to appear in the article titled IRELAND. 
 Enough is enough as they say. he last time I edited the flags I had SonyYouth remove my edits and refer to them as "vandalism". Though they were factually correct. So 'spam' is mild. ( )