Chris,
As you have posted from Ireland I'm sure you must be seeking training here so I may be able to help.I went through a lot of deliberating as to who to go to for my HPPL and ended up choosing Eirecopter based at Weston in Dublin (016280059).The reasons for this are many fold and of which I won't go into much details here particularly regarding the competition.Paul Noctor who runs the school is a very good instructer and he has some good guys with many hours working for him.They use the Robinson R22 for training which is universally accepted as the most popular trainer for lots of reasons.I don't want to open up a debate here but many people think that if you can fly one of these it will give you a good foundation and the ability with time to fly pretty much anything with rotors with relative ease and safety.There's also a good community spirit at Weston amongst the pilots and I find chatting with them to be very educational regarding flying in general.
Hope this helps...