There is likely to be a "significant increase" in rates of income poverty and some increase in severe poverty this year, the head of research at the Combat Poverty Agency has said.
Mr Jim Walsh said those victims of the spate of recent job losses over the past six months faced a 10-fold increase in their risk of severe poverty.
They would be more likely to experience some degree of income poverty, however, the risk of which increased almost seven times when a person lost their job.
Severe or consistent poverty means being unable to afford such basics as a winter coat or a second pair of shoes, while income poverty is less severe and is defined as having an income less than half the average industrial wage.
"There is likely to be a significant increase in poverty levels, definitely with all these redundancies, yes," said Mr Walsh.
US software group Software Spectrum was the most recent company to announce job losses on Monday. Some 90 jobs are to go at its Dublin operation which will close by the end of the year.
Over the past week, however, over 600 jobs have been lost across the State.
The number of job losses in the first half of this month exceeded 1,500, while June was the worst month for notified redundancies so far this year, with 2,706 people losing their jobs last month.
Mr Walsh said the risk of falling into severe poverty for a person in employment was 2.7 per cent.
That risk increased to 22 per cent when someone became unemployed.
The Money Advice and Budgeting Services (MABS) say they are seeing more people coming to them as a result of having lost their jobs.
At Meath MABS in Navan advisers have already had a number of queries from among the 200 people made redundant at Navan Carpets last week.
"People there are very worried," said Ms Deirdre Olohan, MABS administrator in Navan.
"Each case is different. You have to look at their own circumstances, how many dependants they have, how old they are, whether they have a mortgage or not."
At MABS in west Co Cork, where among recent jobs losses have been 80 at Neville Brothers Bakery in Macroom, the number of clients has almost doubled in the past year - from 119 to June last year to 209 to the end of last.
The UN Development Programme last week said 15.3 per cent of the population lived in poverty and that Ireland had the highest poverty rates in the western world outside the US.
