What is happening to UK airline pilots who have been working in say USA or HK and who want to come back?
If they have JAR-FCL licences, they change the State of Issue to somewhere which has an NAA more sensible than the UK CAA, such as the Republic of Ireland, which
does recognise the validity of ICAO IRs.
However you say you hold an ATPL which implies you have an MP IR.
If the licence was a
UK (
non JAR-FCL) ATPL(A), it included embedded IMCr privileges which never needed to be renewed. So the IR(R) validity period
should therefore be 25 months starting from the date of licence conversion.