Leo Varadkar has said the college term for current Leaving Cert students may not start until October or November.
The delayed leaving cert will lead to a knock-on impact for the college year.
This year's exams are expected to begin in late July or early August depending on the latest public health advice.
Meanwhile, a lecturer at Waterford Institute of Technology says the start of the academic year can be easily changed.
Dr Cormac O'Raifeartaigh is a lecturer in physics at WIT.
"It's really something that is flexible, we can change that if necessary.
"I think one has to have enormous sympathy, of course, for students. I think what would kill most people is the idea of going back to school in July.
"But, I think this is a real crisis, it's a world crisis and the way to think of that is in a crisis, sometimes you just have to be flexible so what we used to call the summer holiday will occur at a different time."
Dr O'Raifeartaigh says the results were delayed in 1981.
"There was an incident the year I graduated from school, where the results of the leaving cert were postponed until September.
"That was a very famous year, we literally didn't know what results we had until, I think it was the second week in September, because of a teachers' strike.
"The way the colleges coped with that and work and other places is that pretty much everything started a month or maybe three weeks later than it normally would have done. It just took an extra three weeks at the other end if memory serves."
