I know a fine Irish fluter named Tim. I don't know if he thinks mandocellos are appropriate, but you probably want to use the more common acronym/initialism ITM for Irish Traditional Music.
Whatever postings you've seen, IMO there's nothing inherently wrong with mandocello for ITM, depending on the player. It's about the same size as a full-scale zouk.
The standard CGDA tuning has some limitations for melodic playing; you're either mostly on the top 2 strings and sometimes above 1st position, or doubling tunes an octave below. Or, as with standard tenor banjo tuning, you can try restringing with lighter strings for GDAE or one of the zouk tunings.
DADGAD guitar has little to do with it, as you're just as likely to find guitarists playing in Dropped-D or standard tuning. And you don't necessarily want both guitar and zouk-thing pounding accompaniments at the same time anyway.
One of our session regulars here is a mandocellist who plays CGDA, mostly accompaniment, on a nice vintage Gibson A-style. I find his particular approach a bit bottom-heavy in the overall effect, but that's a matter of personal taste.
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