The hunt for Steve Staunton's successor will start to get into full swing today, according to Ireland under-21 manager Don Givens, who says that members of the three-man recruitment panel are likely to get down to work now that Ray Houghton has been enlisted.

"Ray's only on board," he said, "but I've met with Don and spoken to the FAI about the criteria they need to set down for us. We'll be sorting things out very, very quickly. Hopefully tomorrow (today) there'll be some kind of thing between the three of us to try and put a structure in place to start interviewing people."

Although Howe and Givens had been told they could recruit new panel members as they saw fit, the addition of Houghton came at the behest of the association, with Delaney and Givens having approached the former Liverpool and Republic of Ireland midfielder last week.

"Other former players and people within the game have opted not to become involved," he said in his newspaper column yesterday, "and I'm not criticising them for their decisions, but I feel that I should help out in any way that I can."

Givens, meanwhile, feels it is difficult at this stage to put an accurate time frame on the entire process. "It's hard to know how long it will take," he said.

"I mean with one interview, there's four people, the three of us and the candidate so and there's anything between 12 and 16 people on the list. We know that we don't want to hang around either but we need to do it properly and efficiently and thoroughly. And we'll do that in the shortest time possible."

While the process is ongoing, he said the panel will, within reason, remain open to late expressions of interest from strong candidates.

"If it gets towards the end of January and we're sort of waiting and suddenly Jose Mourinho phones up then you've got to see him, don't you? I don't know if he'd take the cut," added Givens with a smile, "but I'm just saying that logically, out of respect for anybody that shows an interest in the job, we'll talk to them."

After that, he says, he expects that the man the panel decide is best for the job, will be one appointed to succeed Staunton.

"I don't have exact numbers but there's about a dozen people that have to be spoken to in no particular order and when we've done that we'll come back with our recommendation.

"I can't speak for the FAI but they have said that they've given the three of us the mandate to go and speak to candidates, and we've assured them that when we come back, having spoken to or interviewed everybody, we'll give our recommendation and say this is who we think the best man for the job is. I'd be very surprised if the FAI said at that point, said, 'no, we don't want him'.

"Subject to them agreeing terms and conditions with the FAI, I suppose, the logic is that we're picking the next manager."