they must be crazy busy
Also think so ! When I went there to get my licence, there were pilots (fresh CPLs) that are joining Ryan, that were swapping from an EU Authority (not the UK) to Ireland, because Ryan probably demands that their crew to have IAA licences. Therefore if everyone that works at Ryan has to have an IAA licence, that already gives them some work to do. If you add ASL, Stobart and Air Lingus, then they probably already have more than enough work to do, without the people that are jumping from the UK to Ireland.
or are UK operators now encouraging their pilots to get eu easa licences so as to hedge their bets?
Read somewhere in here, some months ago, that Easy asked 1400 of their pilots to swap their licences from the UK to Austria.
simple adding of endorsement
Nebojsar
If you wouldn't mind the question, when you say "simple adding of endorsement", this means that you are adding a new rating to your licence, or you did an LPC and the Examiner choose not to endorse the licence, and therefore you have to apply for a new licence ? In my view the first possibility is slightly more work for the IAA, then the second possibility. Will have to do an LPC sometime in the near future , hence my curiosity ...