The vexed question of FRI is really what does it buy the taxpayer? The problem that the Treasury has with these schemes is that
(i) You end up paying lots of cash to people who were going to stay anyway (dead weight costs)
(ii) Unless you have a proactive plan to fix the problem which has led to the need to use a FRI, then actually all it does is buy you (a relatively short amount of) time at which point you have to do it all again.
Sound familiar?
S41