Student accommodation Dublin prices availability, living costs

Looking for advice on how much other parents are paying their children for monthly allowance. Food, pocket money. What's the best student phone package. How much is the rent for students in Dublin that people are paying.

One of my children has a place in University in Dublin. Exam results were out on Friday 23rd August. CAO offers were out on Wednesday 28th, so 4 days ago. Irish exam results are very late, causing problems for Irish children going to university in other countries (it was worse during Covid).

Once the place was offered you have until Monday the 3rd, so tomorrow to confirm your place. And the scramble for accommodation began immediately on Wednesday. I thought it would be a difficult task. Especially as I had to do this from abroad. My past experience in the UK for example, was that first year accommodation was guaranteed by the university themselves. My child for Dublin applied for University accommodation months ago, but ended up in a 'lottery' and was declined. We did not want to book anything in advance as we'd no idea of exam results never mind location of university. And you lose your deposit if you decline the place after the CAO results.

After the Wednesday results I had 3 offers of accommodation in Dublin, and secured a place with deposit paid last Friday. Today I checked again after seeing an article in the Irish Times and there are places available. It seems that from Wednesday until now as students make their decisions they start cancelling places which frees them up for others. I'm surprised at how this has panned out and was prepared to hit the streets of Dublin but much to my relief it's all sorted.

UCD have some data here.
DCU here

Accommodation is the biggest expense, so hopefully as you know that the rest can be estimated based on individual needs.

Our first time going through this experience and the accommodation part is quite a challenging one. It's hard enough when you're living in Ireland so I can only imagine how stressful it could be for international students.
As far as we could establish UCD (and I think UL) do provide on campus accommodation for first year students so this should make life easier for anyone who knows for certain they will be attending these. But of course nobody knows anything for certain until the CAO offers are out.
For our case, we also missed out on lotteries and also lost a deposit on private accommodation due to a change of mind in the CAO application choices. We ended up getting digs in advance of the CAO offers in the hope that the offer would arrive (which thankfully it did).
I certainly think there is room for improvement in how it works for first year students.
In terms of allowance, there is a recent thread here