Intermittent Home Button Failure on iPad 1

I bought one of the early iPad “1” 64GB iPads in June 2010 in the Apple store, Belfast.  Used for leisure at home and always within a good case it has provided great service since then; that is until loading the pre-iOS 5 download.
It may have been just a coincidence (a point confirmed at the Belfast Apple Genius Bar yesterday) but ever since then my iPad has contracted an intermittent Home Button failure. 
Yesterday, after around 6 weeks of hoping that subsequent iOS upgrades would have corrected the fault I finally took the ailing iPad to the Belfast Apple Genius Bar for a hopefully simple resolution.  Unfortunately there was none.  The two options provided were:
1.    Live with it and use the accessibility options which has a floating software-based home button overlaid on the screen; or   
2.    Pay over £220 for a replacement iPad. – Ouch
That really stung, particularly given the light use the iPad has received compared to the pounding the home buttons on the couple of iPhones I’ve used over the past 3.5 years without failure.
Three questions really:
1.    Has anyone else had a similar Home Button failure on an early iPad 1
2.    Does anyone have any better solution than forking out for a replacement
3.    Could Apple not give their ailing iPads a new lease of life and develop a plug-in home button to fit into the connection socket underneath and clip over the ailing Home Button as an optional override which could also double as an accessibility accessory?

IT WORKED!! :)
After growing increasingly frustrated with the lack of responsiveness while both multitasking or simply closing an app, I tried this this little trick rather than taking more extreme measures.
I'm very happy to report that it seems to have worked like a charm!!
The home button works as well as it did when my phone was brand new over a year ago!
THANK YOU Henk B.!!

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