I wouldn't be so sure that they will back down on the €10 tax, other governments including the UK have not backed away from it and the Irish government will be bouyed by this fact. Factor in the fact that we are in the early stages of the biggest global recession this side of the 2nd world war and every penny will be a prisoner to the Government.
Yes FR are cutting routes and frequencies from DUB, they will however have not just done a lucky dip when deciding which routes to trim or cut. The routes announced a few weeks ago and today will have been either marginal or operating at a loss, they will definately not have cut routes that were high yield or were cash cows.
I would like to see BOH get another aircraft however the route structure from BOH appears to lean very heavily to the bucket & spade destinations which are fine in summer. What do they do with 2 aircraft in the winter? FR like to chop and change routes on a regular basis but BOH seems to have quite a lot of it. Are they using it to test destinations or are they not able to find the right routes? It is also baffling however that additional aircraft are still being placed in UK where this £10 tax has existed longer.