Good to see you're still making progress (sort of!), the fuel thing seems odd, maybe the earth circuit is bad? Could you have disturbed / damaged any wiring doing you jobs at the rear? It's odd that it ran and then later on wouldn't run.
Can't remember which engine you have - 1.6 injection?
I have a spare used fuel pump somewhere if that's the problem, but I suspect not.
I had a similar funny with my '95 1.4 ie a year or so ago when it ran and then just stopped, no fuel was getting to the mono injector, in fact I've had it twice. Both times it needed the AA to diagnose it and fortunately they had the patience and information to do it.
The first time there was dodgy wiring or a connector in the temp sensor line to the ECU and that disabled the fuel injection, the second time a short section of wire failed in a similar area.
If you've got power to the pump then check it is pumping, I think that if it pumps but there's no fuel delivered then probably the fuel just goes back down the return line and not to the injection hardware, that is disabled for some reason.
If you've got Homestart cover and haven't obviously messed it up yourself then you may get someone to check it out and fix it.
A diesel transplant sounds ambitious! Presumably Ireland won't try to demonise diesel as much as other countries seem to want to!
Good luck.