I've come into this one a bit late, and everyone else has beaten me to all the good advice, so all I can do is repeat what's already been said.
First of all, get a Class 1. There's no point wasting time and money if you can't get the medical.
Once you've got that out of the way, as Kefuddle said right at the top of the thread, there's no need to quit your current career. By all means take the voluntary redundancy, the money will come in useful. You might even like to do the ATPL exams full-time before looking for another IT job - it depends whether you think you're up to working and studying at the same time (which is very hard - believe me, because I'm doing it - but not impossible). But there's no reason why you can't get another IT job, do the studying for the ATPLs part time, and do the CPL and IR during your holidays.
The fact is there are very few jobs out there for low-time pilots at the moment. Your age won't help, but even if you were younger there are still very few jobs out there. I'm much younger than you, but decided I need to stay in IT for the security, until I'm actually offered my first flying job. Also, if I can't get a job straight away, my IT job will pay for me to stay current.
Once you're offered a job, you will be taking a very large pay cut. Whether it's worth it or not is entirely your choice. I don't think you've said much about your personal circumstances (I skim-read a lot of this thread, though, so apoligies if you did and I missed it.) I certainly wouldn't be happy about starting off in aviation if I had a family to support, for example. But, if you know the kind of salaray you can expect to bring home and you're happy you can live on it, then go for it! Just make sure you're doing it with your eyes open, and with a backup plan if you can't find work.
Good luck!
FFF
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