More than 89,000 children were living in 'consistent' poverty last year - up by more than 40% in just a year.
The Central Statistics Office which revealed the figure, also found that almost half of all households with one adult with children under the age of 18 are living in deprivation.
The figures come just days after the Government introduced its latest cost-of-living package to help struggling families to deal with high prices.
A recent survey by Kellogg's show that 78% of teachers say children are hungry in their classroom at least once a week with 4 in 10 saying their seeing children arriving to school hungry every day.
Speaking to RedFM News Niamh Dalziel from SVP says while the figures are shocking they are not surprised by them:
"We can understand that that's really hard for people to hear, and imagine, children going hungry in our country. But those of us who are at the coalface, working with people, meeting families every day, that is not a surprise to us and our colleagues in the sector. So it's a really, really hard fact to to understand and to really accept as well but we have to, because this is the reality of many children's lives in Ireland".
