I appreciate and accept all your comments, except for the small catchment. Shannon is well placed to hoover up the traffic from both Limerick and Galway, Ireland's 3rd.and 4th largest cities. That is not a small catchment area. Keep in mind that out of a 4.5million population only 1.2 live in DUB. The extreme focus on DUB is still rather excessive. In the Limerick-Galway corridor there is a minimum of 300,000 people. You also should get alot of inbound tourism for the west and traffic from North Cork, Tipperary, other parts of Midlands etc.
Imo the problem with Ireland is the mindset of people, which isn't really there fault. Up to recently Ireland was a country of Monopolies, Power, Broadband, Telephone, Television (and still kinda is, RTE get too much), so people are not used to thinking about alternatives. It's more of a Dublin is the only option type of approach.