Ireland will next year become the first state in the world where every schoolchild from five years upwards has his or her own E-mail address, Telecom Eireann has said.
As part of its £10 million investment in information and communications technology (ICT) in education, Telecom is pledging that by next September, all 4,000 primary and secondary schools in the state will have Internet access and the 850,000 schoolchildren will each have their own E-mail address.
The Department of Education said yesterday that by June all schools would have at least one computer with Internet access.
Telecom will not be providing any of the computers, apart from a few for technology assistants in education centres and in some disadvantaged schools.
Telecom's head of corporate relations, Mr Gerry O'Sullivan, said 75 per cent of the schools would have ISDN connections, which carry more information and allow much faster access than ordinary phone lines. They also allow people to talk on the phone while their computer screens exchange data. Other schools would have an extra phone line for computer information.
He said there would be between two and four hours of free calls a day, within school hours and to fit in with the demands of the curriculum.
Telecom will also be investing in ISDN lines and Internet access for the 30 education centres around the state, which will carry out much of the ICT in-service training for teachers.
Mr O'Sullivan said a start would be made during the Christmas holidays with the wiring of all 11 schools in Ennis, the winner of Telecom Eireann's Information Age Town competition, for Internet access.