Its done extremely well during its first year as an independant entity.
I dunno. Hate being cynical, but I think the results have to be seen in the context of this story from December
Now we read in the article you linked
Some 1,400,032 passengers flew through Shannon over the course of the year, up from 1,394,781 in 2012.
Does this result include the 4,500 seats on the free Santa flights? In fact, does it count them as 9,000 passengers, between take-off and landing?
There were a few voices hinting that the purpose of the free flights was to avert the need to say that passenger numbers had slightly declined. Tbh, I discounted those stories, until I saw how close the margin was.