The only school is tha does JAA is 43 Air School at Port Alfred, but IIRC you have to be enroled on the Sigmar course to do the JAA training, you cannot just attend and do the JAA license.
I have a South African PPL from Algoa Flying Club in Port Elizabeth - great school, great atmposphere, great bar too. It's a not for profit flying club with a school and it's been around over 50 years, so it's a safe bet - they don't advertise either most people go on word of mouth which is the best form of advertising !!.
Not sure on the rules in Ireland, but in the UK I can fly on my South African PPL with no problems, just like the FAA guys do as it is an ICAO PPL.
In the UK, you don't need to convert it either if you don't want to (although only 1 school told me that - the others lied and said I did to get more money out of me). You can just crack on and do your PPL/IR/Me etc and have it issued as a JAA one once you pass which is what I'll be doing.
If you do want to convert though, leave it until you have 100 hours and have passed the ATPL ground school, spoke to CAA at LGW a couple of weeks back and because I will have my ATPL's done, they supercede the PPL exams so I don't need to take them, just need to do the flight test and radio practical.
If you do it before 100 hours without ATPL, you have to do all the PPL exams as well as the flight test and radio practical which defeats the purpose of going to SA to save money !!.
After 100 hours without ATPL's, you do Air Law, Radio practical and theory and flight test. So a few options there.
I've been back to SA (going next week too) a few times to hour build, but leaving about 10-20 hours to do here to get used to the airspace before going onto CPL/IR/ME at Stapleford.
Do a search on google for "higherplane". It's run by a guy who is a member on here called Irv Lee. He is a UK JAA instructor/examiner but is also a South African instructor/examiner too. He will be able to answer any questions you may have about license issues.
