mr bubblecopter,
Would it be better to scrap the IR in favour of spending a year or so trying to scrape some commercial hours together?
that is a real bad plan, your chances of getting commercial hours are low.
either get your FI and build your hours/experience and do your IR further down the line, or take a greater risk and do your IR now and hope the offshore boys are hiring (but you need to be clear what you are going to do if they arent)
regards
CF