EI can be be competitive departing DUB.

Departing the US they're almost as expensive as US3/BA etc.

The J product, as it stands, is effectively lie flat Premium Economy.

I say this having flown 5 J sectors since October (and it should have been 6 but they involuntarily downgraded me on my last one at the airport).

The whole J experience smacks of a lot of penny pinching and just incredibly poor attention to detail married to some horrific lack of consistency:

• Your plane might not have WiFi (old QR birds or a hire in)
• The catering is incredibly hit or miss, there is no earthly reason you should not get your choice of meal in J, I can't believe how simple it would be to establish a pre-ordering system.
• Similarly, they might run out of your chosen drink in J.
• The lounge situation in the likes of BOS.
• The consistent baggage delays at the outstations, I've waited 1.5hrs at a belt in IAD (EI hire the baggage handlers, they should be ensuring minimum service)
• The seats might be broken in J (as happened to me above, and on another sector that they thankfully managed to fix before departure)
• The service standards are so hit & miss with the cabin crew. It's either excellent or disinterested.
• Call out any of the above, and they'll shrug their shoulders with a boilerplate 'ah that sucks' response without any attempt at customer recovery

The above are all things that have happened to me in those 5 sectors. They're ultimately this bizarro hybrid of promising to be a full service airline on the marketing materials for transatlantic J but in reality delivering a product that borrows a lot from their budget carrier European model. Like I said, I can get on board with it for < €3k going from Dublin, but way harder to stomach the above for the ~$5k they charge for a return starting in the US. This will hurt them eventually.

Now a lot of the OPs complaints are moreso DAA issues, and ones that I don't really think are hugely valid (veteran status obviously isn't recognized in Europe, if you're limited mobility you have the option to request assistance at booking, OneWorld status obviously isn't a thing yet so irrelevant) but there are some valid gripes there like the intra-European flight boarding process, the comms in general, the service. I can see how you bundle everything in together along with some of the points that I've listed and feel like you were 'had' in terms of what they actually promise at booking.

They really should change the motto to 'Aer Lingus - It'll be grand, mostly' as that's what they're delivering at the moment if I can borrow the Irish usage of the word 'grand'.