"The Department of Education and Science created an email service for schools as part of the Schools Broadband Access Programme," Mr Hayes said.

"However, to date, the service has only existed in pilot form and has been extended to a mere 2,333 users (comprised of 56 administration staff, 697 staff/teachers and 1580 students)," he continued.

"Despite this, information from parliamentary questions shows that the Fianna Fáil Government has spent approximately €842,960 on the project.

"With the proliferation of email services available to students, this expensive system that is only available to 0.2% of students can only be regarded as pointless and a huge waste of valuable public funds.

"An argument could have been made in 2005 – when the system was introduced in 21 pilot schools - for the establishment of such a system but, considering the abject failure in extending it to a significant number of schools and the availability of other cheaper services, it must be shelved.

"The service appears to provide little more than an email address and account for students and teachers who have access to it and, apparently, nothing has been done to progress it since 2005...

"To add insult to injury, Batt O'Keeffe suggested the 2009 Budget only provides funding to maintain the system as it stands... Given that the system has been in pilot stage for more than three years and considering there is no Budgetary provision for expansion of it in 2009, is he seriously considering keeping it up?

"... Coming at a time of vicious cutbacks that target frontline education services, Batt O'Keeffe must publicly justify his decision to maintain this pointless service."

Minister for Education Batt O'Keeffe issued a statement rebuking Mr Hayes for his criticism of the service, which "is a legitimate e-mail system which my department is piloting in schools to establish whether it can help in the transmission of materials such as circulars and other online information".