I've sat on the fence with which route to an IR for the last year and this issue just seems to get no nearer a certain conclusion - Europe in turmoil, huge backlash at Eurocrats etc. etc. - so I'm still no nearer knowing which way to jump and quite frankly, this looks like it could run on and on for years and years?
There are two separate issues there:
- having to get the EASA papers
- moving N to G
The first has been done to death here and elsewhere... I've done mine as an insurance policy, just in case, even though it spread itself over much of the past year. It is possible (though IMHO unlikely) that EASA will give an EASA IR to every FAA IR holder, in 2014 or whatever. The French are proposing to do exactly that, after all. But if you look at the political history of the "JAA/Euro IR", I cannot see it happening without at least a
flight test, which in turn means X hours training to pass that, etc, etc... and the general approach around the world to accepting another ICAO license is to sit the local air law exam also, so you have exams, so you have to study for those too..... you get the idea. Once you believe that a flight test will be required, and I do, it directly follows from that that a whole lot of stuff (basically some form of the present 15hr conversion route) will be required. And if there isn't a flight test on the day of conversion, there will be one at each anniversary because there is no way that politically EASA will accept the FAA 6/6 rolling currency. It's 100% politics and 0% safety - the FAA system is as safe or safer.
The second is something which EASA has fortunately backed away from, presumably because they are smart enough to realise that long term parking limits are unenforceable. I guess that the growth of the N-reg community will decrease greatly once the FAA IR route is undermined by the duplicate EASA papers requirement.
Like I always say: if you want a specific capability
today then you need to get off your backside and get it
now 
I started my PPL in 2000 and an "easier IR" has been just "around the corner" every day since then. The CAA IRT has been significantly modernised over the past year or two but the FTOs are still stuck firmly back in the olde days.
Re BRNAV, yes, in the days when Beagle was flying VC10s there was no BRNAV requirement
Today, an IFR GPS is de facto mandatory for enroute IFR in CAS.