That's a serious announcement for the airport - well done to all involved. It will be interesting to see if rumours of Ryanair operating a Scottish route to Shannon materialise now, if they do it would result in change from a complete lack of service to a serious capacity overload between central Scotland and the west and mid west of Ireland.
Regarding the Wild Atlantic Way statement I believe there is a statistic out there somewhere that states that Knock is the nearest airport to something like 8 of the 15 Signature Discovery Points on the route. I have no idea if the stat is factual or not but I think that is possibly where the 'main international gateway' statement originates from.
2016 looks like being a record breaking year for the airport based if the current services are maintained alongside the three new route announcements and the increase to Manchester.