The Minister for Further and Higher Education has said he is "determined" to roll out a number of rapid testing pilot sites across college campuses, university campuses, and student accommodation.
Simon Harris said it was a priority for Government to "make sure that students next year have a much better on-site experience" in September and October.
"I really think rapid testing, alongside the vaccination programme, could be a major help in this regard," he said.
He said there would be an update in the coming days.
The Report of the COVID-19 Rapid Testing Group, which was commissioned by Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly, has recommended that pilot schemes are run in settings from schools and colleges to sporting organisations and workplaces.
HSE Chief Clinical Officer Dr Colm Henry confirmed that it is looking at piloting rapid testing "across all educational facilities from childcare up to universities" and that it intended to finalise these plans "in the next week or two."
The Department of Education has confirmed that it is a member of the pilot project.
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Professor Kingston Mills from Trinity College, Dublin said rapid antigen testing will provide an "additional layer of protection over and above just diagnosis of Covid" by PCR tests.
Speaking on RTÉ's Morning Ireland, Prof Mills said rapid testing could be used in settings like schools, universities, workplaces, sporting events and cultural events, and is already being used in meat processing plants in Ireland.
He explained that rapid testing is not as sensitive as PCR, but it picks up protein from the virus during the peak of infection, and if done often enough it will pick up "the vast majority of people that are positive".
This takes people out of the system in terms of transmission that you would not otherwise be doing, he said.
"Because these people wouldn't tested otherwise", he said. "So if you get, let's say 85% or 90% of people that are detected through positives, then that's taking people out of the system which otherwise wouldn't. So it has huge advantages as an additional layer of protection over and above the PCR test."
When asked about mandatory hotel quarantine, Prof Mills said he sees the dilemma that those in Government must make in terms of deciding whether or not to add additional countries.
He said he understands that it is difficult for people who have loved ones abroad, including himself, but the biggest risk to the success of the vaccine programme is the variants.
Vaccines are fantastic, he said, and will bring protection to the whole community eventually, but variants threaten that.
"Especially the South African-Brazilian one," Prof Mills said. "Because there is evidence, as we've heard, that the efficacy of the vaccine drops against the variants, so keeping out the variants is absolutely critical."
