The wig, the costume, the make-up, the shoes all keep 15-year-old Fiona McNamara on her toes. Fiona has had the same hobby for the last 12 years, and she still isn't bored of it. She loves Irish dancing so much she goes to dance practice three or four times a week - more when there is a feis coming up. That's on top of spending half an hour to an hour most days dancing around the house.

"She is in it for the competition, but she enjoys it. She's not in there just to be winning all the time, she just really enjoys it. It doesn't worry her whether she wins or not; she'll come out of the feis as happy if she's after winning a medal, or if she's after winning nothing," says Fiona's mother, Pat.

Like Fiona, Pat was the only girl in her family and has also danced all her life. She started at the age of six and taught dancing until 10 years ago. Both mother and daughter learned their Irish dancing from Peggy McTeggart, a local Cork city woman, who has been teaching for 61 years. Pat also has two boys, but says she was delighted to have a girl so she could keep up the family's dancing tradition. Her two boys did dance at the age of five or six, but were more interested in hurling and football and so didn't keep it up, she says.

In addition to the costumes, there have been many changes since Pat's dancing days.

"We never knew anything about wigs and the make-up and all that, it has gone very costly now - especially the costumes. They are so expensive really."

Fiona is talking about getting a new costume and this could cost anything from £600 to £1,000, says Pat. "You could get minimum of 12 months, maximum two to three years out of it, it really depends on the age group of the child."

Image is important when it comes to competition and whereas some mothers try to discourage their teenage daughters from wearing makeup in their day-to-day lives, Pat has had to put make-up on Fiona for competitions from an early age.

Make-up is now an integral part of winning a medal at a feis it seems, and Pat hated having to make up Fiona's face when she was a child. "I didn't think there was any advantage having make-up on going up on a stage," she says.

In relation to the wearing of wigs, Pat believes they should be judging the dancing, not what dancers are wearing: "I don't think they should have to wear the wigs. The kids' hair is lovely and they shouldn't have to cover up their natural hair."

There is a feis on nearly every week in the area, but Fiona will only go to one a month. These can cost from £10 to £15, depending on how many events she enters.

"As the age group goes up, the numbers go down," says Pat. She has noticed that when girls are around the age of 15, or are in their Junior Cert year, they tend to drop out.

Fiona's available practice time all depends on homework, and as she is in her Junior Cert year the dancing will have to be cut back, but not cut out, says her mother.

Pat realises how important dancing is to Fiona. "If my child is happy and she's enjoying this thing, I'd prefer her to be doing that than be out on the streets doing nothing."

However, there are other ways that dancing and education can cut across each other - entering feiseanna can mean a day or two out of school during the year.

"A lot of people find it very hard when their kids miss a day at school and they go to do their Irish culture, yet they are marked absent."

For otherwise perfect attendants, this can mean missing out on a certificate for not missing a day of school. This is especially tough on younger children, who think the cert is a great thing, says Pat.

"You don't get this cert because you've gone away to do a feis. That's one thing against the criss-cross between the school and the dancing."