The Government is set to approve a €120 million plan for the construction of a centre for sporting excellence at Abbotstown, Co Dublin, within the next month.
The Minister for Sport, Mr O'Donoghue, is finalising details on the proposals, which he intends to bring to Cabinet in the next three weeks.
There is already broad support among Ministers for the plan, which will see the construction of state-of-the-art medical, fitness and coaching facilities at the site. There will also be a large indoor centre, which will be designed to cater for up to 30 different indoor sports.
The site is already home to the National Aquatic Centre, which is currently closed due to freak storm damage.
The development will take five years to complete, will cost €120 million in total and will be the first phase in the redevelopment of the 500-acre Abbotstown site.
Ministers agreed to the centre in principle last year, when a decision was made to abandon plans for a stadium at the site, in favour of the redevelopment of Lansdowne Road.
New all-weather synthetic and grass pitches are to be laid down, along with an accommodation block, to allow for training camps for various groups, including inter-county GAA teams, and the national soccer and rugby squads.
When the centre was announced in principle last year, it was seen by some as a fig-leaf for the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, who was very strongly supportive of the Abbotstown site.
The stadium had been the subject of considerable friction between himself and his Government colleagues in the Progressive Democrats, with the current Minister for Justice, Mr McDowell, describing Abbotstown as a "Ceausescu-era Olympic project".
However, the centre is now seen by many in Government and the sporting sector as vital to improving Ireland's chances of competing at an international level in athletics and other sporting disciplines.
The recent lack of success of Irish athletes at the Athens Olympics is believed to have spurred on plans, which were drawn up for Campus Stadium Ireland Development, the State company overseeing the Abbotstown site.
One sports source said: "The English have several regional academies. Even countries of a similar size to ours, like Greece, have soccer academies. Whatever excellence we've achieved in Ireland to date has been by accident rather than design."
Ministers also see the project as feeding into the idea of sport and fitness being used to tackle Ireland's growing obesity problem among young people.