At the Galway offices, Threshold advises students to bring a mobile phone. It can be hard to get places here all right, and prices are almost comparable with Dublin, so get hunting as soon as you can. Unlike other cities, the paper with the flat listings comes out only once a week. So at this time of the year every Wednesday when the Galway Advertiser comes out, there are long queues at the pay phones. We do hear rumours of poor accommodation, but in recent years we have found that students are becoming more confident and tending to articulate their concerns to landlords.
Some colleges actually insist first-year students take the option of digs.
But USI advises students that they should be sure they know exactly what the terms of agreement are. There is no legal obligation to sign a lease if you offer digs to students, and we come across cases where students are being evicted overnight - frequently because they were never clear as to what was expected of them in the first place.