Whopity - so this means that the school I was talking to, essentially was talking rubbish...
If I needed 30 hours of instruction to pass my CB-IR, they would make back the cost of being allowed to do IR training, and still have £60 per hour for the instructor with no-one but me doing the course! Seems a little crazy to me...
But perhaps I am just bad at numbers, and maybe it is one of the few things required to make money out of general aviation training? I told them that I would need to save a little before even contemplating the training. (i have started the groundschool - but not sat the exams yet)