The board of the Health Service Executive (HSE) has approved the appointment of the most senior managers in the newly restructured health system.
The line-up of divisional directors will be announced in the coming days.
Mr Kevin Kelly was announced as interim chief executive of the HSE from January 1st, 2005, by the Tánaiste and Minister for Health, Ms Harney, at the weekend.
The board of the HSE has also been asked to recommend a successor for Mr Kelly as chairman of the HSE. It is understood Mr Kelly will resume as chairman when a permanent CEO is appointed in six to nine months.
Mr Kelly's appointment fills the immediate vacuum at the head of the HSE following the decision last week of the CEO designate, Prof Aidan Halligan, not to take up the post.
It is believed that at least one current health board chief has been successful in the competition for nine divisional directorships of the HSE. It is considered likely that a doctor with a background in public health will be appointed as director of population health.
The directorships of information technology and corporate affairs will probably go to candidates from outside the health service when the appointments are formally announced in the middle of this week.
Asked in an interview on RTÉ yesterday whether she felt the permanent CEO of the HSE should be a medical doctor, Ms Harney said she had a number of perspectives on the appointment.
Emphasising that an appointee could be a health professional, someone from a business environment or from public administration, she said: "What I want is the best possible person for that job because the task ahead is an enormous one".
The trade union which has threatened to block the restructuring of the health service, IMPACT, is likely to contact Ms Harney's office today to seek talks.
Members of the union have voted for industrial action over what they claim is a failure of the interim HSE to provide adequate assurances on the future of staff or services.
As a first step, they plan to stop co-operating with the reform process from December 13th.
The union has 15,000 members directly affected by the reforms, including senior managers, and says that without their co-operation, the planned change in structures cannot take place.
In yesterday's interview, Ms Harney said her door was open to discussions. "I want to empower employees and motivate them", she said.
Her comments were welcomed by IMPACT's national health secretary, Mr Kevin Callinan, who said the union would "respond positively" by seeking early discussions.
He denied suggestions by Mr Kelly, however, that the union's concerns were the result of a misunderstanding, and that the assurances sought from the interim HSE had in fact been provided.
"The fact is we have spent a year trying to resolve things and our members were then balloted over several weeks. So there has been nothing rushed on our part," Mr Callinan said.