Jamie,
Fair enough comment and clearly the data on how they fair head to head v Ryanair is not publically available , but EI have survived in the face of incredible competition, who equally says that FR profit on every route where they compete with EI either. FR have deep pockets to hurt EI and they haven't kept on every route where the 2 meet , though there are few enough examples.
My point is EI are resilient and their model enables them to compete with FR on the scale that they do ...