The Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, has given the first indication that major changes in the Cabinet can be expected once the coalition negotiations are concluded.
Mr Ahern is expected to spend the weekend deciding who will fill the various ministerial positions in the new government. It is believed the negotiations between Fianna Fáil and the Progressive Democrats will conclude later today, having continued late last night.
The negotiating teams are expected to spend today putting the finishing touches to a joint document which they will present to the Taoiseach and the Tánaiste, Ms Harney. However this is unlikely to be published until early next week.
Mr Ahern said yesterday that once the negotiations were complete he would turn his mind "to the make up of his Cabinet". It would not simply be a reshuffle, he explained, or an "extension of what went on".
"We are now looking to a new mandate from the people; to a new government, a new period of office. And of course that means you have to change. It has to be a government that moves on, not only to be the government for now, but to be the government for the next five years in this country," he said on RTÉ news.
He would be operating from a clean sheet, he said. The hard part was that there would be disappointed people.
"There are people who would expect to be appointed and they will not. The people who believe their time has come and it can't for everybody.
"That's always the hard bit about it . . . I have to look at it from the position that it is a new mandate . . . In the end of the day, I have to think what is right for the country." The issue of the division of ministerial positions between Fianna Fáil and the PDs will be left to Mr Ahern and Ms Harney. It has been speculated that the Tánaiste wishes to be minister of a new department with responsibility for infrastructure and transport, and that the Attorney General, Mr Michael McDowell, would like to be minister for justice.
However, these are considered as two frontline departments and Fianna Fáil could consider those two positions as well as two junior ministries too much to concede to the PDs.
The teams met in Government Buildings at 8.30 a.m. yesterday and continued until 2 p.m. They broke to review progress in the afternoon and resumed at 7 p.m. By this morning they will have met for up to 20 hours since the beginning of the week.
It is considered that there is nothing intractable between the two sides at present, although a number of issues are up for re-examination today before the final draft of the document is ready.
The issues of income tax, privatisation and the national stadium are among those expected to feature today.
It is understood that both parties have come to a compromise agreement on their approach to funding the major infrastructural projects facing the country in the next few years.
Fianna Fáil's manifesto included the establishment of the National Development Finance Agency, "a radical departure for the financing and delivery of major infrastructural projects".
The PDs are committed to privatising the ESB, Aer Lingus and Bord Gáis in order to raise funds.
Both parties are expected to hold parliamentary party meetings early next week before finally signing off on the coalition document.