I have a situation where my IT guy is going to be away I have somone trying to make a small change to a php file but Ioncube is getting in the way...

Shouldnt him having ftp access enable him to read these?

If not how can i have these edited... someone please help

You cannot without the key that's been used to encode the file.
That's the point of those type of tools, to prevent unauthorized peoples to make changes.

don't waste your time to try to break the encoding, simply ask for the key to your IT.

Ditto the tripy. There are people out there who can break ioncube (at a price). It's about £5 a script though.

Ask your IT man to send you the key or ask for an un-encoded version.

*Also, I hate ioncube. It just adds to server load in my view*