A picture of a homeless five-year-old eating his dinner off a piece of cardboard has gone viral.

The young child, known as “Sam”, was spotted by The Homeless Street Cafe, a group of volunteers who provide food and toiletries to the homeless in Grafton Street, Dublin.

Tragically, Sam was not the only child to have used the services on Tuesday night and according to Denise Carroll – a volunteer for the group – there were at least four others.

She told The Independent: “When we started three years ago we rarely had kids, now most nights we will see children.

“Their poor parents can’t cook in their accommodation and can’t eat in restaurants every night so are doing their best to source some home-cooked food for the kids.

“’Sam’ is only a representation through a snapshot of our night of the 4,000 homeless children struggling right now.”

Ms Carroll said she was “affected” by what she saw.

She added: “You can become hardened to it seeing it every week. I’m also a nurse in my professional career but there are nights that catch you unaware and it can be overwhelming – the sheer scale and hopelessness of the situation.

“On that night alone we dealt with: Kids sitting on the ground to eat, a homeless lady in distress who told us she had been raped by a group of men, a man who was hiding his sleeping bag in a bush every day while he went to work and on our way home a man lying in his sleeping bag under a streetlight on a path beside the Liffey as people all passed by.

“I was definitely affected by that night.”

The Stats: Homelessness in the UK Show all 10 1 /10 The Stats: Homelessness in the UK The Stats: Homelessness in the UK Sleeping rough up 165% from 2010 The total number of people counted or estimated to be sleeping rough on a single night in autumn 2018 was 4,677, up 2,909 people or 165% from the 2010 total of 1,768 Getty The Stats: Homelessness in the UK London rough sleepers up 13% The number of people sleeping rough increased by 146 or 13% in London since 2017 AFP/Getty The Stats: Homelessness in the UK London accounted for 27% of people sleeping rough in England London accounted for 27% of the total number of people sleeping rough in England. This is up from 24% of the England total in 2017 Getty The Stats: Homelessness in the UK 64% of rough sleeps UK nationals 64% were UK nationals, compared to 71% in 2017 AFP/Getty The Stats: Homelessness in the UK 14% of rough sleepers are women 14% of the people recorded sleeping rough were women, the same as in 2017 Getty The Stats: Homelessness in the UK 6% were aged 25 years or under, compared to 8% in 2017 AFP/Getty The Stats: Homelessness in the UK Thousands of families staying in temporary housing Almost 79,000 families were staying in temporary housing in the last three months of 2017 because they didn't have a permanent home, compared with 48,010 in the same period eight years before Getty The Stats: Homelessness in the UK Reduction in families living in temporary housing before Coalition government There had been a significant reduction in families living in such conditions before the Coalition government came into power, with the number having fallen by 52 per cent between 2004 and 2010 under the Labour government AFP/Getty The Stats: Homelessness in the UK Families staying in temporary has risen since But the figure has crept up in each of the past seven years, from 69,140 in the last quarter of 2015, to 75,740 in the same period in 2016 and 78,930 at the end of last year Getty The Stats: Homelessness in the UK Nearly 58,000 families accepted as homeless (2018) Nearly 58,000 families have been accepted as homeless by their local council in the past year (as of March 2018), equating to an increase of 8 per cent over the last five years Getty

The photograph was posted on Facebook on Tuesday, when temperatures plummeted to 4C in the Irish capital.

The volunteers set up on Grafton street and serve food to at least 200 people each week.

Writing on Facebook, the Homeless Street Cafe’s post reads: “We are home after another incredibly busy night. I’m exhausted, weary and emotional and should (guiltily) go to bed BUT there is an image burnt in all the teams’ minds tonight.

“It’s wrong and it’s distressing but this IS happening and it’s only getting worse each week.

“’Sam’ is five and this was him eating a dinner of carbonara tonight on a sheet of cardboard.

“Can we really accept this?”

According to the most recent figures from the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government from August this year, there were 6,143 adults and 2850 children who were homeless or living in emergency accommodation.

Across Ireland, there were 8,216 adults and 3848 children deemed homeless.

Homeless charity Focus Ireland claimed there has been a rise in homelessness due to a lack of social housing provision combined with private house building “grinding to a half”, leading to more people renting their homes and struggling to afford rent.

The charity added: “The number of homeless families has increased by 348 per cent since August 2014. More than one in three people in emergency accommodation is a child.

“However, this number does not include ‘hidden homelessness’ which refers to people who are living in squats or ‘sofa surfing’ with friends.