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my mother and 5 of my friends have Irene as a middle name and they all pronouce it I(eye)Reen.

In Spanish Irene is prn. ee-REH-neh. Las two syllables, dry sounds. not "ey" but "eh", as first syllable in the word existing. I suppose this is because in Spanish you prn as phonetically spelled.
Hope this helps,
Magia.

Once upon a time, the Brits used to laugh in a superior kind of way when they heard Americans pronounce it with 2 syllables. The reason was that Greek was taught in English public/independent schools, and also the top government schools, for much longer than it was in the USA; plus the Continent is right next door to them, so they were used to sounding that final E. However, they did change the I from an EE to an EYE, giving Eye-ree-nee. And the truly awful nickname form of Reenie!

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Now it's probable that they've been colonised like the rest of us and, mostly, gone the American route. Here in South Africa people only seem to use Eye-reen.

Lemme take a guess

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Maybe you've heard it from people of different backgrounds
eye-reen is the English/American pronunciation
ee-ree-nee is the original (Greek) pronunciation
ee-re-na is the German and eastern European pronunciation