If setting themselves the target of having a new manager in place within three months seems just a little laid back on the part of the FAI's officials, it's worth remembering that the people who run things in Merrion Square have more on their plates just now than who picks the team that plays in Georgia at the end of March.
An eventful month or so gets under way this Saturday when the organisation's officers will get their first peek at the Genesis report, the independent assessment of Ireland's World Cup campaign in which most of them will feature extensively.
The document, whose authors are said to have spoken to all of the key players involved, is likely to be published early next week, after which there may be the need for that most practised of FAI manoeuvres - the damage limitation exercise.
It continues in the last week of November, when commitments that can be sold to UEFA have to be extracted from the Government regarding stadiums for the Euro 2008 bid. The association's current line is that there will be cause for much singing and dancing on November 30th. If not, then there is sure to be an abundance of ill feeling from their bid partners after UEFA make a final decision on the staging of the championships in Nyon, Switzerland, six weeks from now, for the Scots could hardly be blamed for taking defeat badly.
In the midst of all this, the association's leadership will sit down early next week to start figuring out how they are going to replace Mick McCarthy. The talk is of someone with extensive experience of the European game, and it's a nice thought, but the suspicion is that the organisation's budget, combined with the team's circumstances - no points and rumours of disquiet within the camp at the prospect of Roy Keane returning - will make the post attractive primarily to those with hands-on experience of the English lower divisions.
Perhaps, like McCarthy, someone can at least be found who possesses a holiday home on the Mediterranean.
By yesterday the names being floated most widely included Joe Kinnear and John Aldridge, both of whom have performed well at club level in England without exactly setting the world alight.
Of those without an obvious connection to Irish football, John Toshack appears to lead the field. The Welshman certainly knows the continental game, although it should be pointed out that his last stint in management, with Real Sociedad, ended in March when, having won just 16 of 52 games under his leadership, the club lay at the bottom of La Liga. This week it leads Europe's strongest league by three points.
Of course, the timing of McCarthy's departure has not helped the FAI, for it would have been far easier to find a replacement immediately after the World Cup. But the level of funding available to the association remains a far greater handicap.
While the English FA, with its turnover of some £70 million, can afford to lure somebody like Sven Goran Eriksson to London with a salary of roughly £2 million, plus bonuses, the Irish organisation paid McCarthy around £350,000 - a very similar percentage of its total income, as it happens.
There is probably some room for manoeuvre, but not close to the sort of leeway to allow the FAI to compete for a top tier European manager.
Even in terms of club football, of course, the association is some distance from being at the races. Anxious to get a foot back on the ladder, and with his reputation as a manager in need of some rehabilitation, Joe Royle recently accepted the job at a cash-starved Ipswich for around £250,000 a year, but almost every top flight English club pays in excess of £1 million now, while Dave O'Leary, during his last season at Leeds, is reported to have earned a package including bonuses totalling £3.2 million.
On Tuesday evening, McCarthy's former international team-mate didn't even wait until the vacancy was confirmed before expressing his disinterest.
On the Continent, of course, Brian Kerr and Don Givens would figure prominently among the list of possible successors, but the latter has barely been mentioned this week despite taking the job on a caretaker basis, while the Dubliner is roughly the same odds to get the post as he was a few weeks ago for the Sunderland job.
But Spain's current manager, Inaki Saez, and, lest we forget, Switzerland's Jakob Kuhn worked with their nation's underage sides before graduating to their current roles.
Givens, who yesterday described the opportunity to manage the senior team for the Greek game as "a fantastic honour", has a man management style that many of Ireland's senior players might find a little unpalatable, while there is a strong suspicion that he takes almost as dim a view of Roy Keane's behaviour in Saipan as McCarthy did, and that, even if his record with the under-21s wasn't a problem, would effectively rule him out for the FAI.
Kerr's record since taking over two of the association's youth teams is impressive, but until a majority of the senior panel is made up of players he has already coached it seems unlikely that he will be considered seriously for the job.
All of which makes for a difficult few months for an association which hopes to have a new man in place by the time Ireland play Scotland in mid-February. Its leadership has shown, regardless of how you feel about the departure of McCarthy, a new talent for playing hardball in managing to part company with a man they had lost faith in while paying him only €60,000 upon his departure.
They may not have pushed the 43-year-old, but as he stood on the ledge for the past three weeks deciding whether to jump there was nobody out there giving it their all to talk him down, and when he finally decided to take the plunge they made it clear that, as it was his decision, they owed him nothing more than a goodwill gesture.
It may not have been nice and it undoubtedly made the tributes paid to him at Tuesday's press conference ring just a little hollow, but it was still a decent bit of business.
The difficult bit, though, is clearly yet to come.
