The city centre charity says they have seen the number of people seeking help to feed themselves and their families increase significantly since Christmas.
A new report from Barnardo's found that over half of parents are cutting down on things like medical expenses and loan repayments in order to feed their families.
25 per cent of parents also said that they often worried about whether or not they would be able to provide food for their children
Speaking to RedFM News, Caitriona Twomey from Cork Penny Dinners outlines how the increased demand for food has impacted the charity:
"We've always had a backup dinner, plus another backup dinner because you never know, you know how many it's going to come. And we'd always be prepped and ready for to go the next day. And we found since Christmas. We've been using tomorrow's dinner as well for today's dinner. So no, we know that we have to prep a lot more than what we were doing. Like we will be geared up for to serve about 300 dinners every day. And we reckon on one Sunday about two weeks ago, there was about 700 dinners served in one day alone, which was an absolute record altogether."
