Immigrant workers are needed to enable the Republic's booming economy to "stand still", the Tanaiste has said.
At a FAS jobs fair attended by 20,000 South Africans, Ms Harney said the State needed new labour to remain competitive, avoid a wage spiral and implement the National Development Plan. This would require an additional 200,000 workers by 2006, she said.
The director general of FAS, Mr Rody Molloy, said the Republic had 40,000 immediate vacancies.
Ms Harney said the Government was considering extending a visa scheme to foreign workers with accounting qualifications -it currently applies to computer and building specialists, and nurses.
In addition, she said the processing of visa applications might be sub-contracted to FAS or to private sector firms. There was much local interest in the jobs fair, at which 16 Irish and multi-national companies sought staff. Most of the job-seekers were white South Africans - young and older. Many queued before the fair started. A FAS spokesman said 5,000 registration forms had been submitted within two hours of the opening at a conference centre on Saturday morning.
When asked why they might move to the Republic, many cited high unemployment - which averages 30 per cent in South Africa - and rising rates of violent crime, seen as the most pressing problem facing the post-apartheid regime. Others, albeit fewer in number, wanted to experience Irish life.
A number claimed Irish descent - about 25,000 Irish passport holders live in South Africa, but only 5,000-7,000 were born in the Republic.
The fair is one of a series in which the State training body has attempted to hire people in Prague, Berlin, London and Newfoundland. It will go to Johannesburg later this week. No figures are available yet on the number of positions filled directly through the initiative.
Job-hunters compiled "virtual" CVs on the FAS jobsireland.com website; some were interviewed.
Many of the companies offer relocation packages - worth £30,000 in some cases - to highly-qualified recruits.
Those seeking staff included the State's largest banks, AIB and Bank of Ireland, IT groups such as Intel, IBM and Nortel Networks, construction firm PJ Hegarty and the Jury's Doyle hotel group. Mr Maurice MacMahon, human resources director at Eirgrid, which operates the national electricity network, said it wanted to fill 22 high-end engineering and project management positions. These would command salaries of £45,000 - £55,000.
Foreign workers were needed in all sectors, Ms Harney said. But there would be no "open door" policy for non-Irish people from outside the EU. From this group, only those who matched specific job needs would be allowed work in the State.
"I don't think any country can have an open-door policy on immigration," she said. "People at the bottom of society would suffer most if there was a slump."
The South African government had been "very supportive" of the initiative, Ms Harney said.
When asked whether the local authorities had expressed concern about a "brain-drain" - such as in the Republic in the 1980s when many graduates emigrated - she said it had not.
In addition to racial tension, South Africa's government faces significant economic difficulty.
It has so far failed to attract substantial foreign investment hoped for when free elections were held for the first time in 1994.
Figures cited by the South African Institute of Race Relations suggest only 13 per cent of adults have formal work training.
Many of those that do have low skills, a legacy of the apartheid regime in which higher education was mostly confined to whites.
In parts of South Africa, white people have nine times as much annual disposable income as blacks, where blacks work.
The Government expects to remain in office until 2002, the Tanaiste has said. Ms Harney added that tax reductions in the Budget would compensate people for high inflation.
She also favoured bringing forward the process of "benchmarking" public sector pay with the private sector, if possible.
