MarkD - I completely agree, FR use Ireland purely as a flag of convenience inside the EU. As soon as they can relocate that AOC they will be gone like a flash. The point I was trying to make is that regardless of how profitable the DUB routes are, the next logical expansion for shorthaul in EI is to start looking at routes ex-UK a la FR. And why not? If you can operate on a route with a lower cost base than your comptetitors, you're going to generate profit more quickly! Witness the battle on DUB-STN, EI were never going to be able to compete. The routes you refer to out of ORK etc; most of those are served by low capacity aircraft, very few of those aircraft have more than 100 seats. Clearly this is not the type of operation EI is moving towards.
There was never that much connecting traffic from UK regionals through DUB to the states, I just don't think that people ever thought that they were really able to (or ever thought that transitting DUB was a lot easier than LHR!)
As for oneworld, I think that you'll find that on a global basis, carriers will pull off the more marginal routes (which may have been historically really only for connecting traffic) and concentrate on those point-to-point services which probably make up the core of their business and concentrate on sustaining that. oneworld promised greater flexibility in changing between carriers' networks, rather than promising a standard level of service. Anyone travelling internally in the US will know that the level of service in Y class is not that far away from what EI offer right now!