The Oireachtas Committee on Health is to decide next Thursday which former health ministers and senior officials to call as part of a series of planned hearings into the nursing homes charges controversy.
The committee is also to seek legal advice from parliamentary legal adviser Lia O'Hegarty on how to proceed with its hearings and report on the affair, a task which must be completed and forwarded to the Dáil within three months.
It is expected that members will agree to hold a series of public hearings into the Travers report, and to call senior civil servants involved in the affair, including former secretary general of the Department of Health Michael Kelly.
Fine Gael is also pushing for up to 10 former ministers for health, including current Minister for Finance Brian Cowen and former taoiseach Charles Haughey, to be invited to appear before the committee.
It is expected that members will also seek advice on documents that the Department of Health has refused to release on the basis of legal advice from the Attorney General.
Yesterday the committee chairman, Fianna Fáil TD John Moloney, said members would have to discuss what would be feasible, given time constraints.
The Travers report on the affair, which was published last week by Minister for Health Mary Harney, identified serious shortcomings in the Civil Service, where concerns about the legality of nursing home charges for medical cardholders had been known since the mid-1970s.
"Thursday will be the first time, as a committee, that we will be sitting down to discuss, since the Tánaiste appeared before us, how we proceed with this," he said. "We have to report back to the Dáil within three months, and I will have to discuss with the committee how we can make that deadline. I've also invited Lia O'Hegarty in to advise us, and I expect we will also deal with documentation out of the Department of Health."
The committee, which meets fortnightly, already has a full schedule. It is understood that the TDs and senators will consider sitting more frequently if required to meet the deadline.
The issue of access to documents was raised by the Fine Gael health spokesman Liam Twomey. He referred to two documents which were in a file sent to the then minister for health, Micheál Martin, early last year, which Mr Martin said he never saw.
The documents are understood to contain legal advice drawn up for the South Eastern Health Board which said the charges were illegal.
A spokesman for the Department of Health said the documents had been withheld on the advice of the Attorney General because they contained information on issues not in the Travers report that could have implications in future court cases against the State.
However, Dr Twomey said yesterday such an explanation is not acceptable. "This document has been available and has been widely circulated to every single health board. It is already in the public domain. I don't see any reason whatsoever why we, as members of the Dáil, are not entitled to see it."