14 guys have been taken on so far this year, and their courses start between now and April as far as I am aware. Courses are spread through the year and tend to be for groups of 4 or 6 pilots, so it will take a while to get the numbers trained that the company needs.
The Australia route is apparently now pencilled in for the start of the Winter timetable, round about October. By then, there should be enough new hires on line to cover the initial needs. Beyond that, the company has many possibilities but has not yet announced further plans. The JE slots acquired recently will go into the pool of available slots; I imagine there will be a fairly big revision of routes and timings at the same time as the Australia route starts, when it will become clearer what the plan for those particular slots is.
As a thought: what would be the long-term economic future of a company that trained pilots for tasking it didn't have?!