The Society of St Vincent de Paul in Ireland has reported a 10 per cent rise in the number of requests for help, with the majority of these related to food.
More than a quarter of a million calls for help were made to the charity in 2023.
This new record includes roughly 30,000 people who sought help from the SVP for the first time.
While more than 90,000, or 36 per cent, requested help with food, almost 20,000 calls related to energy and utility bills.
Christmas saw a spike in requests with more than 34,000 calls from families who needed help. Other requests for help at specific times of the year included back to school costs, as well as issues around mortgages and rent or funeral expenses.
“Despite the additional cost-of-living support payments made by the Government, there are many people who continue to struggle to meet basic family expenses,” SVP national president Rose McGowan warned.
She said the SVP’s main concern at the moment is the number of households in arrears on their gas bills or those who cannot afford an oil fill. “With another cold snap on the way, we are worried this situation will get worse as people try to manage debt and current usage costs.”
Ms McGowan also highlighted the mental toll on people of ongoing financial difficulties, poverty and lack of certainty about the future.
According to Dr Tricia Keilthy, SVP head of social justice, the Irish government has committed to reduce consistent poverty to 2 per cent or less by 2025. The rate stood at 5.3 per cent in 2022.
“To reach this target we need to see in 2024, a move towards benchmarking our social protection system to what people need to live, increased investment in education across the life cycle, better pay, training and employment supports to address in-work poverty, and significant strides by the Child Poverty Unit to set us on a path to ending child poverty,” she said.