In my experience there is a lot more going on in the background of this type of case than first meets the eye.
First of all, the difference for a debtor between pursuing one route rather than the other need not be that great and practically is
usually not that great. For example its easy to imagine that a bankrupt and a PIA client will pay the same amount from their income
each month for the benefit of creditors except that the installment order for the bankrupt will stop one or two years earlier. If the PIA fails due to sickness or redundancy, this shouldn't be much of a problem either. There is an option to go bankrupt at that point if that is necessary and discharge will follow within one year.
In 99% of cases that I have experienced where the debtor is overly enthusiastic about bankruptcy, the real issue and concern from the debtor's standpoint relates to future expected windfalls such as an inheritance, or retirement gratuity or redundancy payment or pension lump sum or whatever it may be. I dont wish to be unkind to the OP by suggesting this but I do wonder if, like others, this is where his real worry stems from. By going bankrupt sooner rather than later the debtor tries to ring fence future windfalls from creditors. I don't think the legislation should be altered to facilitate this type of scenario or other self-serving interests.
I have nothing further to offer to this discussion