Ok so moving on further, I have stumbled across a couple of Sony Codecs that I have installed, in conjunction with a whole pile of microsoft MPEG codecs too - and voila, we are able to use the video in premiere! Still a bit jumpy, not 100% perfect, but much better than the program crashing on me...
What I still fail to understand is why the Sony IT department told me that there were no codecs available - when clearly, there is?