Materialistic is more pronounced

Priests View: Trying, to get people to spend less on their children's First Communion is "a lost battle", according to Father Donal O'Leary, parish priest at Gardiner Street, Dublin. People are going to do it anyway, even though it often involves less well-off parents borrowing heavily.

He says the same extravagance also often applies to funerals. Non-attendance of children and their parents at Mass after the big day is "certainly a deep pastoral concern", but Father O'Leary hopes that, as religion is a long-term thing, the Sacraments and attendance would assume more meaning in later life for both children and parents.

Father Philip Dennehy, parish priest at Athy, Co Kildare, also feels there is "an awful lot of expense" involved in First Communion, and it is certainly true he would not see some of the parents and children for a long time afterwards at Mass again. But "there are a tremendous number of good parents" too, he stresses.

In Boherlahan, near Cashel in Co Tipperary, Father James Feehan says there are "a lot of truly very good parents" who continue to attend Mass regularly with the children after First Communion.

There is certainly extraordinary extravagance in some cases, and the materialistic aspect of the day has become more pronounced, he says. In Ballymote, Co Sligo, parish priest Father Greg Hannan praises the teachers who prepare the children for First Communion.

He notes how classroom walls are covered in imagery, including religious imagery not so often seen in the children's own homes now.

Teachers are giving everything, but frequently the parents' support is not there, Father Hannan suggests. He believes there is little priests can do to try and control the inordinate expense of the day.

If, for instance, they insisted that children receive First Communion in their school uniforms there would be an outcry.