The long-awaited Government health strategy was given approval by the Cabinet yesterday.
The strategy will finally be published on Monday, although it had been due for publication today, and a number of other dates had been proposed over recent months.
The Department of Health has explained the latest delay as being due to printing difficulties.
It is understood the strategy was approved yesterday without any disagreement between Ministers at the Cabinet table.
However, there have been reports of strong disagreement between the Minister for Health, Mr Martin, and the Minister for Finance, Mr McCreevy, in the last few weeks.
A meeting of the Cabinet sub-committee on health, involving the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, the Tβnaiste, Ms Harney, Mr Martin and Mr McCreevy, signed off on the plan last Thursday week.
However, according to Government sources, a number of details involving the financing of the seven-year plan, particularly over the next 12 months, remained to be agreed.
This resulted in further discussion between Mr Martin and Mr McCreevy, who has been publicly sceptical about further funding increases for the health services, saying he wanted to see more value for money.
According to some sources these discussions were fraught and resulted in the delay in publishing the strategy.
A spokeswoman for Mr McCreevy said she was not aware of any rows and believed the delay was due to printing difficulties. One Department source said the difficulties had been between officials from both Departments and that every year finance officials had to go through an "unnecessary process" of making the health figures "more realistic".
This year, because of the strategy, the opening gambits were particularly high.