If you speak a certain level of another language such as French, German, Spanish etc, it may be worth seeing if you can apply to them as a cadet, although I'm not sure what their minimum requirements are.
Self funding is another option if you have a friendly bank manager. All that being said, by the time you get sorted doing any of those options, it's going to be the best part of a year down the line anyway, in which case it might just be worth waiting for the NATS deadline to expire.
I believe Ireland might be short as well........!
Good Luck
