Individuals around the country will be "queuing up" for the St Vincent de Paul (V de P) society's help with first Communion expenses at this time of year.
At other times of the year, the society helps with expenses such as exam fees and schoolbooks, its vice president told an Oireachtas Committee yesterday.
Addressing the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Social and Family Affairs, Prof John Monaghan said the society spent €42 million in 2005 helping disadvantaged people.
While some progress had been made in the most recent Budget, he said, efforts to encourage people to move from welfare to work were being hampered by "poverty traps" in relation to welfare and other benefits.
The society was also receiving calls on a weekly and monthly basis from school principals throughout the country asking for financial assistance to provide for psychological assessment of students, he said.
The V de P is one of the largest providers of social and affordable housing in the State, he said, but in his experience, many individuals who live in housing paid for under the rental accommodation scheme were subject to extremely poor conditions.
It was "incredible" that the V de P spent €4.6 million on food in 2005, he said, with individuals forced to contact the society for food vouchers.
"It is a sad fact that some people in Ireland simply don't have enough to live on," he said.
Ann Stokes, research assistant with the Vincentian partnership for social justice, presented details of research it published last year. This revealed that most households on social welfare or the minimum wage did not have enough income to sustain a basic standard of living.
The research, which drew on techniques used in Britain and the US, assessed the affordability of a basic basket of goods and services.
It showed that weekly incomes for five out of six household types surveyed - such as lone-parent families with two children, two-parent families and single adult males - fell short of a basic standard of living.
Ms Stokes told committee members that in order to cope with a "seriously inadequate" income, such individuals had no choice but to either get themselves into debt - or stay within budget with an accompanying "poor" standard of living.
Among the recommendations of the partnership is that social welfare payments and the national minimum wage rate should be benchmarked to allow for a "minimum essential standard of living".