Originally Posted by ChurnieEls

Oh young padawan, welcome to the EI ecosystem with all its lumbering tech debt and all that entails, all the while its IAG parent adheres strictly to its penny wise and pound foolish strategy of avoiding any capital spending if it can, but building up that UK/EU-261 accrual in the cave of service failure.

Anyway I'll try to address your concerns one by one:

1. EI releases 1 to 2 J seats per flight, I believe 330 days out (open to correction on this) and then may drop some more depending on how J is selling. Unsurprisingly you may find that NYC area airports are quite popular O&D ports for both New York and Dublin, attendant to that is people living in these cities tend to have a lot of cash which they spend on J thus further reducing award availability.

I'm far from an Aer Lingus apologist on here, but the majority of the issues you're encountering are pushed down from the parent IAG and their puppet Embleton, formerly of your beloved BA.