If you have Cingular and your phone is triband or quadband (go to their website, there's a list), you can add their International plan to your existing plan for $5.95 a month. And you'll be all set! They have an agreement with one or both of the Irish Cell companies.

...and T Mobile USA too but...

Cingular charges $1.29/minute to make and receive calls (unless you pay $4/month in which case it drops to $0.99/minute) and T Mobile USA charges $0.99/minute to make and receive calls...

Much too expensive if you really want a functioning mobile phone to make and receive calls...a short 5 minute talk with a friend every night for 3 weeks is $105....

If you want the phone simply in an emergency to be reachable that's okay but I don't call that having a mobile phone.

OTOH the local prepaids or international prepaids are the direction to go if you want to be able to really have use of mobile phone technology while on holiday.

We just returned from our trip. We were traveling with a group of 8 in two cars. We gave one of our phones to the other car. Cingular worked great! We had no problems using our phones to keep in contact when one party or the other was running behind, etc. Of course, we haven't gotten the bill yet! And we may not be so pleased when we do. But, in a situation like that, it meant an awful lot to know that we had a way of staying in contact with the rest of our group.

I am a cingular customer with a Razr phone. I called their international help line (twice since I always check to see if I get the same information)and they were very helpful. They requested thru motorola to have my phone unlocked, which takes about 5 days - I guess because of paperwork or something. They then recommended that when I get to Dublin I pick up a prepaid SIM card to use for calls in Ireland only. Then my regular SIM can be used to call back to the states. It's worth paying the 5.99 for a month to lower your calls from 1.29 to .99. If there was an emergency where I had to spend an inordinate amount of time on the phone it would be well worth it. Also, I signed up for their 3.99 plan for this month to call Ireland to book rooms. This allows me to call for 7 cents a minute vs 1.49/min. It sure beats waiting for email replys or sending CC info thru unsecured emails.

We rented a phone over there in Summer, 2004 from Rent A Phone Ireland for 3 weeks for about 100 euro, if I remember correctly. It came charged with about 20 euro worth of credit, and could be recharged with a credit card. We had it shipped to our original destination in Waterford, and we simply dropped it in the mail when we left. We rented it through Pat Preston's site and got some kind of discount. It seemed to work everywhere, except in Northern Ireland. We mostly had it so we could be contacted while there, because we were on the road and often staying in places that didn't have phones available in the room. We didn't use it a lot, just as an emergency, but did use up the credit.