How should I go about renting a cell phone in Ireland?

I am going to Ireland for a little over 5 months during a study abroad program in Galway. I would like to know what service is the best for coverage and best for pricing.

#
I've been with the three main networks here; Vodafone, 02 and Meteor. Do not use Meteor, please. Coverage is terrible. I had to switch even though it's cheap, because of the amount of black spots. In my experience, Vodafone has the best coverage. 02 comes second, but is cheaper then Vodafone. 
So overall, 02 is probably best. I am with Vodafone however, because of the signal and the differences in the cost is not much. Just google search for the websites. All Irish networks do offers now like top up by E20 a month and get free calls and texts to the same network or free texts to all networks. So I only use E20 a month. 

When searching for info, I should let you know there's no cell phones in Ireland. They're called mobile phones, or just "mobiles" mostly. 

I don't know of any renting services here. I know there is in other countries. But you could pick up an Irish mobile cheap enough (or do you mean getting a bill phone?) . Oh yeah, Vodafone does free worldwide web texts now. That would probably be good for you. If you're with Vodafone, you can just go on to their website and text any country for free.

#

As far as I know you can't rent a mobile phone (we don't call them cell phones here) Simply buy one here from €30/€40 upwards on a prepay (pay as you use) facility. Top up whenever you want. Don't opt for bill pay as you'll be tied into a 12 month minimum contract as far as I know (although that may not be the case with the O2 network - not too sure) For value opt for Tesco Mobile - as far as I can see they are probably the cheapest and double your top up amounts, so if you buy say €10 phone credit they give you €20 and so on. 

You could also just get a prepay SIM (sometimes they are even free) if you have a mobile phone that is already unlocked and would work in Ireland. Coverage is pretty much the same with all of them as far as I know (for example Tesco Mobile use the O2 network) 

See the following mobile phone providers: 

http://www.tescomobile.ie/ 

http://www.o2online.ie/wps/wcm/connect/O... 

http://www.vodafone.ie/ 

http://www.meteor.ie/ 

http://www.three.ie/index.htm 

Personally we used to be with Meteor as our fixed landline/broadband package had free landline to Meteor calls but that's ended so we've changed our fixed landline/broadband package and our mobile phone network to Vodafone as we can get 200 free mins a month from our landline to any 3 chosen Vodafone mobile numbers.