Didn't know (but am not suprised!) that they are going back to DEP. They were building a nice little experience gap that was going to bite them in a couple of years.
I fly out of BFS quite regularly as thay are short of Captains (I'm LPL based) and it always seems a happy base. Some very early starts and a few to many 6 sector days, but the folks are nice, base manager seems a good type and it's all 700s.
Certainly if you particularly want to be based in N/Ireland I can't think of a better solution. I think you'd have easy in preference to jet2, which is, I think, the only other operator with a base there.