davidjohnson6; you support my point. There's more in Northern Europe then the UK&Ireland for example Scandinavia, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands.
Let's compare the number of based aircraft in a country and the number of inhabitants, not the best comparison but it will give you an idea.
UK: 75 based planes, 1 per 0,82 million people.
Ireland: 23 based planes, 1 per 0,26 million people.
Norway: 0 based planes, but that's not an EU country.
Sweden: 6 based planes, 1 per 1,54 million people.
Finland: 0 based planes, Why?
Denmark: 0 based planes, Why?
Germany: 20 based planes, 1 per 4,10 million people.
Belgium: 8 based planes, 1 per 1,33 million people.
Netherlands: 0 based planes, only because of a night curfew at Eindhoven?
The difference is huge, when we compare the UK and Germany for example we see that Germany has 5 times less based planes per million people. While I think both markets are pretty similar, wealthy countries, not much inbound tourism, and healthy LCC competition(EasyJet, BmiBaby and a lot of charter airlines in the UK and the likes of EasyJet, Germanwings and TUIfly in Germany)