WHAT'S THE STORY WITH THE COST OF FIRST COMMUNION?:LAST MONDAY morning there was a parade of young girls posing for photographs in Dublin's Mountjoy Square. As the first warm sun of summer bounced off their dazzlingly white parasols, the little girls did little twirls and their proud parents beamed and snapped away at digital cameras.

Fast forward seven days and it is a racing certainty that the parasols have joined the dresses, shoes and all the other accessories in cupboards where they will attract no further attention, except perhaps from the moths who will feast on them in the years to come.

While dressing a child up at enormous expense like a mini-bride may seem like one of the first of the Celtic Tiger excesses to go in the current climate, as this year’s Communion season draws to a close, reports suggest quite the contrary.

Although parents do appear to have cut back on the outfits for themselves and for their boys (to the delight of the boys, most probably), it’s different for girls. Sales of high-priced faux-wedding dresses with all the frills have held up strongly and parents will spend an average of €500 on kitting out their daughters this year, with boys costing half that.

Over the last four weeks, more than 60,000 children will have made their way up the aisle at a cost which is truly staggering. When the clothes, the cash gifts, the bouncy castles and the food and drink for their nearest and dearest are all totted up the nation, collectively, will have little change out of €80m.

It is, say people involved in the Communion industry, money well spent. Marion Gale’s Donnybrook boutique has been kitting out many of south Dublin’s little girls for their big day for 20 years, and she says business this year has been “excellent”.

She says that girls’ clothes in particular have proved to be recession-proof, with parents willing to go without to ensure their children get what they want. “People want the best for their children and why should they apologise for that?” she asks.

SHE DOES NOT believe for a second that the stories which abound at this time of year about flashing tiaras, fake tan, false nails, helicopter rides and hired hummers are actually true and claims they are merely are rolled out to sell newspapers.

“I have been in this business for 20 years and I have never once seen a child making their communion with false nails or fake tans. They are urban myths, I am convinced of it.” And she may well be right: such crazy excess may not be commonplace; although, three years ago, the Minister for Health, Mary Harney, was not so convinced when she ordered a consultation on sunbeds after coming across children who had used them to get a tan for their big day.

What is irrefutably true are the prices associated with dressing little girls. In Gale’s shop the dresses range in price from €200 to €600, the gloves cost €10, the tights another €8. Veils start at €25, although one with added sparkles costs €50, while handbags are €70. And then there are the shoes – handmade and Italian, and costing between €100 and €150.

Gale’s prices are in line with other communion outfitters across the country and she does not accept Pricewatch’s suggestion that they are ridiculous sums to be spending on an outfit which will get a single wear – two or three at a stretch. She admits it is a “total extravagance” but says the money is well spent because it is “a day of light and hope amid all the gloom” and is one which brings families together.

Caroline Murphy from Limerick is like many well-meaning parents who are aware of the excessive spending associated with the event but still find themselves succumbing to it as the event draws closer. Her daughter made her communion last weekend; the dress cost €245, the hair accessories €16 and the hairdo an extra €25. All told, she spent well in excess of €500 on the communion, “which is crazy money. I do think it has got out of hand. There are families near us who went to hotels on the day and the bill was over €1,000 just for the meal.” The average spend on catering the event last year was €354.

At the Four Seasons in Ballsbridge, communion business has been booming; according to a spokeswoman, even in the middle of the depression, bookings are actually up this year. She said the number of people holding large parties was holding steady while the number of reservations for smaller numbers of people – immediate family only – had increased.

But the big thing about the First Holy Communion for many is not the food or the clothes but the gifts – the miraculous medals, the sterling silver crucifixes and the bibles that kids so love . . . Ah, who are we kidding? It’s all about cold hard cash. And the amounts that change hands have risen to breathtaking levels. The average cash receipt for children making their first communion was €463 last year, a sum which might sound excessive for most people except the 24 per cent of kids who took home between €500 and €1,000 and the one in 20 who got in excess of €1,000.

ACCORDING TO A survey, commissioned by EBS Building Society and published last week, those amounts are likely to hold steady this year. In March the building society surveyed 1,000 parents and, while 80 per cent believed the downturn would have a negative effect on their children, only 27 per cent thought it would reduce the amount of communion money received by children.

Nearly four-fifths of parents said it was appropriate to give €50 or less to a child making their communion. Some 14 per cent said between €51 and €100 was appropriate with the remaining 7 per cent suggesting that over €100 was an appropriate amount of money.

There was a time when the only cards exchanged on the day of a First Holy Communion would have had a religious picture on the front. Not any more. With a view to cashing in on what is an extraordinarily flush market, this year voucher company One4All debuted its “specially customised One4all Holy Communion Gift Card” aimed at giving children their “very own grown-up way to buy what they want to mark their special day”.

It is another sign the First Communion businesses has, as Caroline Murphy told Pricewatch, lost the run of itself. “The day I made mine I was taken to the chipper, got a nice bag of chips and a burger, got a doll in Roches Stores and came home.”

On its own big day in the mid-1970s, Pricewatch got a tenner, a picture bible and lunch in the grandmother’s house – despite the high spending this year, such frugality might well be on the way back.