Right, it's snowing so I thought I'd go out and try to pre-emptively fit my towing eye (should be a strap on its way to me but I haven't got it yet) however as I thought, the FMIC pipework partially obscures the hole so it's impossible to get on. I can almost force the outlet pipe down far enough with my hands but then there's not enough room to get the thing in to screw in without taking the offending section of pipework off (which means bumper off which I can't do as I can't get flat enough on the ground to undo all the fastenings since the car is sat on the ground surrounded by inches of snow!)

The strap should also have an "adapter" consisting of a chopped towing eye with a bolt through it, but I'm not sure that there's even enough clearance for this plus if it's been sawn off it might have rough edges and I don't want any vibrations to wear holes in the pipework. Not sure what the problem is, it's a Forge intercooler which was made after the so-called "revised" Fabia vRS version which claimed to not affect the towing eye...

I'm now wondering whether I can just bolt the metal bracket of the tow strap straight into the threaded hole and have it sort of flat up against the bodywork? What type of bolt would be suitable for that?

The problem being the bolt would need to be left hand thread which isn't that common

Yeah, I realised that as I was having a look around online. I can see one guy (pip_vrs) has done what I want to do, however it involved chopping everything apart from the threads off his original towing eye and then drilling/tapping it to accept a standard threaded bolt. Sadly, I don't have the equipment or skills to do this myself so it looks like maybe back to the drawing board.

Interestingly he did point out that the eye isn't actually 90 degrees to the car, he suggests it actually protrudes on a slight downward angle so Id have to move the pipework even further down than I already have been to actually get it to fit. Alternatively, armed with this knowledge, I might try lifting the outlet pipe up this afternoon and fastening the towing hook in between the two IC pipes. If it's on a downward slope I may have more luck with that.