What is it with women and shoes? It's a passion that can turn an otherwise sensible person into a glassy-eyed consumer.

Shoes "speak" to the 20- and 30-somethings and they just have to have them. Some of the women asked suggest that their shoes say who they are - young, trendy, sexy - even if they're not. Others reckon that it just makes them feel good to be shod in the latest fashion. Whatever the reason, the Imelda Marcos syndrome is alive and well with all of those surveyed admitting that they don't know how many pairs of shoes they own but "probably around 20 pairs". The days of "one pair for everyday and one Sunday best" are long gone.

Sandra McCaffrey, assistant-manageress of Carl Scarpa in Dublin's Grafton Street, estimates the shop sells 60 pairs of shoes on a normal Saturday. The average cost is between £60 and £70, the age group mostly between 20 and 30.

Customers, she says, once they've seen their heart's desire, will not be thwarted. And that means even if they don't fit. The shop will do everything to accommodate a customer - put in special orders and ring around other branches in the attempt to get the right size. But, if their efforts fail, typical customers will buy a size too small and convince themselves that "they'll stretch". They ugly-sister their way into the latest fashion and hobble on.

It's at this point that they're walking themselves into trouble. Stephen Peebles is a prosthetist orthotist at Cappagh Orthopaedic Hospital in Dublin. Part of his job entails measuring feet and taking plaster casts to assist in the manufacture of special shoe inserts to alleviate various foot complaints. The number of times that the measurement of the foot is bigger than the shoe being worn by the patient is "unbelievable", he says.

Finbarr D'Alton of the Irish Chiropodists'/Podiatrists' Organisation agrees that there are definitely more women than men presenting with bunions, corns, hammer toes, in-grown toenails etc. that can be blamed on footwear that is too tight. "But they don't like to be told that", he adds.

Marion Holohan (32) is a mortgage sales executive and a "bit of a shoe-aholic" by her own admission. She owns 59 pairs of shoes (not including runners and flip-flops) all of which she's bought over the last two years. She regularly gets rid of the old to make room for the new although she "hates parting with them".

If she likes the look and the colour of a pair of shoes, they become a "must have" item. She tries to be sensible about price and can't remember paying more than £130 for a pair. That said, she sometimes avoids the more expensive shops, unless it's sale time, rather than be tempted. Last week, she rearranged her work schedule to allow her to be at a certain shop at 9 a.m. for her latest "must have".

"I love the look and the smell of them", she says. "The more different or daring they are, the better I like them." Of the 59 pairs that she owns, 50 or so are what she calls "elegant" shoes - very definitely high-heeled. The rest are "work" shoes, but even these have at least a three-inch heel. She does not own one pair of flat shoes - for "flat", read inelegant, dowdy and decidedly un-sexy. In other words, "sensible" shoes.

She admits that she has often bought shoes that seemed too high to walk in but she practises around the house for a few days. She has also bought shoes that are too small - particularly if they're a bargain item - and will "stretch" them by wearing thick socks and "running them in" at home. Shoes often dictate the clothes she'll buy - she has bought shoes that she knows will lead to the purchase of an outfit to match.

Does she worry about corns, bunions and the like? "So far I've been lucky," she says. She believes she's good to her feet - the shoes she buys, although dedicatedly following fashion, are generally of good quality and she does try to get a good fit. And she looks after her shoes - she always takes the box when she's buying and stores most of them in their boxes. She wears runners when driving (more to save wear and tear on the shoes than on her feet) and brings her shoes regularly to a shoemaker to be mended - never, she says, to the while-u-wait shops. The materials used by a traditional shoemaker are, she maintains, far superior.

So, how do the foot experts rate Marion? David Borton is a consultant orthopaedic surgeon specialising in foot ailments and looks after the busy digits of some of the Riverdance troupers. He considers that she's merely storing up trouble for herself.

"At 32, everything is still in good working order but, as she ages, the arches may tend to collapse. She could well have problems in middle age." Shoes with pointed toes are just not compatible with the natural shape of the foot. Eighty per cent of the foot surgery that he carries out is on women.

"Men's shoes are broad and therefore facilitate bunions," Borton says. He couldn't remember the last time he had operated on a male bunion. Women patients in the under-25 age group will, he says, "tell me lies in the hope that I'll operate and narrow the front of the foot", such is their desperation to follow the shoe fashion.

So, even at 32, Marion is doing well to have escaped.

Heredity is also a factor, Borton explains, as bunions and the like tend to run in families, so perhaps Marion is lucky with the foot genes. She wins no prize for admitting to squeezing occasionally into a small size, though. But the fact that she has so many pairs and is, therefore, not spending too long in any one pair, is a plus. He recommends too that she kick her shoes off under her desk at work or under the table if she's at a function - the less time spent in pointed toes and high heels the better.

I ask him if he has any theory on this fascination that women have with shoes. He says he doesn't understand it but accepts that it's there. The up-side for him is that he knows he'll always have work.

Finally, a quick tot of Marion's 59 pairs - over two years at, say, an average of £100 a pair is £245 per month. "I never thought of it like that," she says. "But it doesn't matter - I'd go hungry for shoes." McCaffrey in Carl Scarpa agrees: "Our customers never actually need shoes - but they want them."

If the shoe fits . . .