Madrid flights
I'd say the demise of Madrid services had more to do with Munster people having a preference for bucket and shovel destinations like Faro and Alicante rather than city breaks in refined cultural capitals like Madrid.
A big problem for Cork and Shannon is their dependence on home grown traffic and their inability to attract inward tourism on any significant scale. This is particularly noticeable at Shannon which once had a mighty influx from Germany every Saturday but that inward business has disappeared.
Cork has also only a fraction of inward French business compared to the halcyon days of the Mid 1990's when even A300's and DC10's flew tourists in.