I thought I had heard somewhere that in the last 60 days or so Aerlingus was working towards JV or antitrust immunity with AA or BA on transatlantic routes. If so, that would certainly move them closer to 1W.
Adding Aer Lingus and Air Italy would go a ways to 1) providing some redundancy in the EU network which is beset by carriers on the periphery of the continent and 2) give us more options to avoid LHR and BA's awful surtaxes.