This year the Society of St Vincent de Paul will assist around 845,000 people, including 105,000 children living in consistent poverty, who are going without basic essentials.
Requests for help to the SVP's call centres are set to exceed 250,000 this year, a 7% increase on 2024.
Eastern Regional Support Lead at St Vincent de Paul Sinead Gill said: "It's real day-to-day things that we take for granted; putting food on the table, looking after your children, making sure that they have coats to go to school in.
"It's the normal things that we all just take for granted that we have. These people are in desperate crisis when they ring us here in the helpline centre.
"They've exhausted all other avenues. We've seen an increase of pensioners reaching out to us who are struggling with the cost of keeping the lights on.
"I've had one pensioner reach out to us and said that it's between heating and eating at this stage, and that they have that kind of stress and strain on them.
"We also would have single parents reaching out for us. Children want various things for Christmas.
"Their parents are feeling that pressure, that added pressure that they have to provide these things.
"It's not just a certain person from a certain background, it's very vast."
National President of the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul Teresa Ryan said that there has been an increase in middle-income people looking for help and that many of them have a lot of bills to cover.
"So, you're hearing things of people struggling actually to provide educational support for their kids.
"Food on the table, electricity, that's a huge, huge problem with people because they allow their electricity bills to build up and rather than address them, they would want to put the food on the table for their kids and themselves."
She added that the middle-income people are very slow to look for help.
"You'd often hear 'Well, people are worse off than me and I shouldn't be looking for help and I feel embarrassed'.
"This is the kind of thing we hear. They might be in rental property, they might have lost their house due to not being able to keep up the mortgage payments.
"There's a mountain of different issues that are coming up for that income group."
Regional co-ordinator Maria Pete Sorensen explains what they include in their care packages for Christmas.
"So, we're seeing a higher increase in people looking for assistance with basic essentials.
"You're looking at your weekly food shop, you're looking at your essentials for your children, so hats, gloves, scarves. Looking at hygiene items like female sanitary items, in particular, detergents, washing up liquid.
"We also have a lot of food banks here in the east region and one of our food banks reported this week they're delivering over 900 parcels of food this week alone to families up to Christmas."
'Rising food prices have pushed food poverty to alarming levels'
In Cork city, Penny Dinners have been feeding the hungry since 1888, and now support around 500 service users every day of the year.
They expect that number to increase even further on Christmas Day.
Catriona Twomey of Cork Penny Dinners said that people are barely surviving and food poverty is at "alarming levels".
Speaking on RTÉ's Morning Ireland, she said: "Too many families and individuals are finding their incomes falling short of their essential expenses.
"So, rising food prices have pushed food poverty to alarming levels.
"I suppose, for some, the heart-breaking choice again is between heating their homes and putting food on the table.
"But it's just families, it's individuals, it's the working poor. And again, the financial pressures don't stop at the door.
"The mental-health toll, especially among our young people, is profound. There's anxiety, depression, and feelings of despair.
"They're all rising.
"And we see heart-breaking consequences, increased homelessness, struggles with addiction, and often at the root causes, but tragic symptoms of deeper challenges that people have."
She said the Government needs to come up with solutions that are "truly sustainable and healing" and address not just the symptoms but the root causes.
"We all know what's happening, we all know the issues, we all know the problems.
"We all know the solutions as well. We just need the Government and everybody to buy into what we know and to work from that.
"Can you imagine not having any money for Christmas? Because they're barely surviving on what they have. At Christmas, they don't get anything extra.
"So, they're still paying the same bills, the same rents, the same mortgages, the same fuel costs, the same food costs, the same, you know, clothing costs, etc.
"Even toiletries, you know, are gone very, very high in price. And you hear people looking for them struggling big time.
"I suppose then the added cost of Christmas can be disastrous for some."
Director of the Capuchin Day Centre in Dublin Fr Kevin Kiernan has said that people seeking their services are from all over the world and are trying to make ends meet.
Speaking on RTÉ's Morning Ireland, he said: "They're from all over the world... because Ireland is such a multicultural society.
"So, the people who come to our day centre are no different. People are trying to make ends meet.
"The pressure on families, especially coming up to Christmas, even if you have a job, there is the pressure.
"So, there's even more pressure on people who are homeless or who can't make ends meet, especially this time of the year."
He explained that people queued up last Friday for a ticket, which enables them to get a voucher today.
"So, it's a good way to do it, in the sense that last Friday we got a good indication of how many vouchers we need.
"And so there's big queues this morning, but everybody is guaranteed a voucher."
More than feeding with food
Fr Kiernan said that apart from the vouchers, they try to make Christmas normal, especially for the children.
"Last weekend, we had two Christmas parties. After Christmas, we'll have another Christmas party.
"So, we try to have happy memories, if that's possible, for the children."
He added that there are many people who are working who seek their help but still can't pay their mortgage or pay their rent.
"So, this is a help, especially to buy some groceries for Christmas", he said.
The Capuchin Centre is open six days a week all year-round serving breakfast, lunch and dinner and they also provide food parcels.
"We notice that coming up to Christmas, when the children are off, our family area will be full of families coming for their breakfast and also for their dinner.
"So, that's 52 weeks of the year, six days a week. It's ongoing."
Fr Kiernan said it is more than feeding with food.
"There's the nourishment of human contact. There's a group of men come here every morning for breakfast and they're not homeless.
"But as one of them said 'You know, I don't meet anyone from one end of the day to the next'.
"So, it's the poverty of loneliness. And he said 'You know, what's important is that if I'm not here, I'm missed'.
"If he's not here, where's John this morning? So that's part of it.
"So there's nourishment at all these different levels. We start by feeding and then the nourishment of human contact."
This is the first Christmas without the Capuchin Day Centre founder Brother Kevin Crowley, who died in July.
"He retired three years ago and went to Cork, but he was still very much involved in the centre. This is very difficult for us because not only did we lose our brother, he's our brother Capuchin, but also our founder.
"But he's still very much present as we minister to the poor.
"We think of Kevin and we think, Well, what would Kevin do? And Kevin would be right in the middle of it, feeding the poor and looking after the poor.
"And that's our charism as Capuchins", he said.