Whatever was decided in the 1980s, EI are very much free to fly Dublin-Liverpool today. The route was dropped last year (or year before?) only because it was not deemed profitable enough for the airline....the fact that it was only daily and not more frequent, plus only offered connection to New York and not elsewhere in North America, must have been contributive factor in the route being dropped.EI still serve the north-west region, so FR cannot be considered a pure monopoly. Cologne and Basel are only served by Easyjet, Bucharest adn Gdansk are only served by Wizzair and Malta by Air Malta from LPL, so should we DEMAND competition on all these routes in the name of 'fairer' pricing? Of course not.
Naturally the fares are high for this weekend- this is how all airlines work... demand increases and if supply cannot increase accordingly in the short run, then prices will increase. This is not another conspiracy.