The Tanaiste may apply to the High Court to have inspectors appointed to companies linked to the Ansbacher deposits in order that depositors could be forced to submit themselves for interview.
Legal sources have said that, for any such application to be successful, Ms Harney would have to put forward a detailed argument supporting her view that the move was necessary.
Section 8 of the Companies Act 1990 allows for the appointment of an inspector if the court is satisfied there are "circumstances suggesting" a company's affairs were run "to defraud its creditors or the creditors of any other person".
Creditors would include the Revenue, and there has been speculation that some of the funds in the Ansbacher deposits were being hidden from the Revenue.
Sources said depositors could be named in any report produced by an inspector, though not without sufficient reason.
An authorised officer, Mr Gerard Ryan, has been investigating the Ansbacher deposits for more than a year, but has not spoken to many of the depositors. Mr Ryan may request interviews with third parties, but he does not have the power to compel such persons to submit themselves for interview.
Mr Ryan is due to report soon after Easter. Ms Harney and her legal advisers are likely to study his findings to see if there is sufficient material to justify an application to the High Court.
Ms Harney has said she knows the names of the depositors but is proscribed by law from revealing them. She also said she would not do so in any event, until the people had been spoken to.
"There may well be some people who had overseas accounts who had very good reasons to have those accounts, because they were working overseas or they traded overseas," she said recently on the Money Box programme on RTE.
"So before we would ever dream of putting a name into the public domain, those people would have to be spoken to and they can't be spoken to at the moment under the existing inquiry because of its limitations."
Mr Ryan has been conducting inquiries into Guinness & Mahon bank, Irish Intercontinental Bank, Ansbacher (Cayman) Ltd, and Hamilton Ross. The first two are Irish banks and the other two are financial institutions based in the Cayman Islands. Mr Ryan has also been appointed to Kentford Securities, a company controlled by the late Mr Des Traynor and through which cash withdrawals from the Ansbacher deposits were made by Irish residents.
A High Court inspector appointed to the companies involved in the operation of the deposits would have the power to require persons who are not officers or agents of the companies, but who might have information concerning their affairs, to come forward for interview and to produce documents.
A High Court inspector, Mr Lyndon McCann, who was appointed in 1997 under section 14 of the Companies Act to inquire into certain shareholdings in Bula Resources plc, used these powers to require persons not connected with the company to co-operate with his inquiry.
In the TV interview, Ms Harney said she was "surprised by what has come to light" regarding the Ansbacher deposits. In the Dail last week, she said "leading principals in large organisations have been involved in huge breaches of the Companies Acts".
