Hardly rocket science, the requirements have remained largely unchanged as far back as I can remember and if its good enough to train for an IR, its good enough for the IMCr. The last thing we want is another course for the FIC
Your usual bull in a china shop approach, Whopity.....
Whilst the course might be the same, the problem is that the reduced prerequisites for FIs wishing to instruct for the IMCr / IR(R) will no longer be available after 17 Sep 2012. Thus they would need to have achieved, amongst other things, at least 200 hours of flight time under IFR - no longer will the current alternative of 50 hours of IF time be acceptable. Whereas until that date, a reduced experience level of 10 hours flight time by sole reference to instruments is applicable for FIs wishing to have the 'no applied instrument' restriction removed in order to instruct for the IMCr.
This was pointed out to the CAA nearly 2 years ago, but nothing was done....