Reading through the various posts, one would think Aer Lingus is on its last legs. Okay, it's going to make a loss this year - probably not more than £20m, not good, but not life threatening. It's been through worse and while it's true, the market has changed against national carriers and handouts, I don't think one could honestly put EI in the same basket as SN.
First of all, look at Belgium, centre of Europe, the EU, NATO, all the carriages of the gravy train - with all the premium class travel that goes with that. It had the advantage of open skies (something Aer Lingus still doesn't have), it splurged on new aircraft it must have known it couldn't pay for (no doubt expecting SR to), it never made the list of airlines people would really like to fly with (on quite a few occasions being towards the bottom of the list), it got astronomically more in the way of state handouts to Aer Lingus and operated a huge network to former colonies and francophone Africa, which let's face it, is nto a lucrative market.
Now, compare to EI, small market - fairly poor for most of its history, fighting the government's half-arsed and politically "driven" aviation policy - always cautious (some would say over-cautious) in opening new routes. Yes, it got over-staffed - was this really EI's fault? EI has had a lot of visionary people the full extent of whose vision was effectively blunted by politicos.
It developed a good, commuter operation, it built up a fine t/a operation when circumstances allowed it and when it's given a truly free hand, it will do so again.
Although I don't work for EI, I've watched its development and all things considered, it is a much better than average airline and particularly so, given the constraints within which it has to operate. Sure, it looks as if Foley was shafted and there are quite a few problems, but if EI can sort out its problems, build a decent hub at Dublin and continue to work on its pax service (which have always been good; it's just never been a great innovator), I see no reason why it can't be a very good carrier.