The Society of St Vincent de Paul expects to receive more than 50,000 calls for help between now and Christmas.
The Society says 576 requests for assistance were made to its Eastern Region office - covering Dublin, Kildare and Wicklow - on Monday alone.
It says around half of those requests are from people seeking help with food and fuel.
Helping homeless families living in temporary accommodation is an ever-increasing part of its work and the charity says it spends almost €40m a year on direct assistance to families and individuals.
"The level of help we can provide will depend on the generosity of the Irish people", said SVP National Vice-President Kieran Stafford at the launch of the Society's Annual Appeal today.
"While our immediate concern is to help families avoid an empty Christmas," said Mr Stafford, "our longer term focus is on helping families to break the cycle of poverty."
"Support from the Society is primarily given to help people through particularly difficult times, but we also work with families to avoid the same difficulties recurring through generations."
The theme of the SVP Annual Appeal, which was launched by RTÉ's Ryan Tubridy, is "Your 'yes' can last a lifetime".
A series of advertisements to highlight this message will be published during the annual appeal, which runs until the end of the year.
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