The average child's birthday party now costs over €500, but are parents the problem and should we re-evaluate how we throw kids birthday parties, or is this just the new norm?

Comedian and podcast producer for the Irish Times Steve Cummins told The Hard Shoulder that he’s not surprised, but “it is a shocking amount of money”.

“Obviously my lads are a bit older now but we learned our lessons after each birthday party,” he said.

“The first birthday party we had was for my eldest, he was about four and we had it in the house and we put a bouncy castle out the back garden which basically took up the entire back garden, because it’s a small garden.

“Then we scrubbed and we scrubbed and we scrubbed because my wife was going, ‘If a lot of people are coming to the house it’s going to look amazing’.

“Within 10 minutes it was destroyed - the garden was destroyed, the house was destroyed, so we swore, never again.”

Children's birthday cake and party food spread. Image: Greg Balfour Evans / Alamy. 2013.

Mr Cummins said that while parents always want to bring a bit of magic to their kids’ birthday, sometimes less is more.

“My advice to anybody is to get them to pick two or three really good friends, do something really nice – maybe go to the cinema, go to a fancy water park, go to whatever – and then it’s more,” he said.

“We always had one rule with the boys, which is when we did have parties, you invite who you want.

“It wasn’t this blanket, ‘Invite everybody in the class’, or anything like that."

According to Mr Cummins, goodie-bags can also be a huge cost that adds up.

Main image: kids and clown at birthday party