  The intrinsic constraints in the amplitude of the accelerating fields
sustainable by radio-frequency accelerators demand for the pursuit of
alternative and more compact acceleration schemes. Among these, plasma-based
accelerators are arguably the most promising, thanks to the high-accelerating
fields they can sustain, greatly exceeding the GeV/m. While plasma-based
acceleration of electrons is now sufficiently mature for systematic studies in
this direction, positron acceleration is still at its infancy, with limited
projects currently undergoing to provide a viable test facility for further
experiments. In this article, we propose a recently demonstrated laser-driven
configuration as a relatively compact and inexpensive source of high-quality
ultra-relativistic positrons for laser-driven and particle-driven plasma
wakefield acceleration studies. Monte-Carlo simulations show that near-term
high-intensity laser facilities can produce positron beams with high-current,
femtosecond-scale duration, and sufficiently low normalised emittance at
energies in the GeV range to be injected in further acceleration stages.
