Grandfathered rights for existing holders - this seems to be assured
The usefullness of this depends on when the deadline for new IMCRs will be. It might be April 2012, or a bit later.
Currently very few people are doing the IMCR - about 250/year, down from 3x that much some years ago.
No doubt the decline is partly because it has been slagged off for so long by so many people, including some very high profile forum personalities who post on various forums saying how useless IMCR
pilots are compared to IR pilots...
In reality it is a debate concerning a comparison between
renters and
owners, basically, where one would expect big currency-on-type differences between the two pilot populations. Most good IMCR pilots are owners, and most IR holders who just occassionally rent are crap IFR pilots.