Unfortunately, in Cork - and to an extent in Dublin - Aer Lingus went down the all their eggs in one basket track.
Routes like Malaga, Faro and Alicante were great when everyone was borrowing money and living beyond their means, but they had only one income stream outbound Irish leisure passengers.
And routes with a better mix of passengers were allowed to stagnate.
I can guarantee you that routes like Paris and Amsterdam are not suffering as badly. In addition to Irish leisure passengers, they get inbound leisure passengers and business passengers. But yet these routes saw their frequencies reduced to make way for the sun routes.
And as for places like Dusseldorf and Frankfurt. Those only take inbound leisure passengers and business travellers. They require some marketing. Too much like hard work. Easier to not even consider them.
But now we're in a different economy, the folly of pursuing the easy passenger is starting to become clear.