One of Ireland’s most politically active artists, Christy has a long history of highlighting injustice and of fighting for citizens’ rights. He has also campaigned on a variety of environmental issues, going back to the anti-Nuclear movement, which was crucial to preventing the building of nuclear reactors in Ireland in the late 1970s.

While the scale of the threat from the use of microbeads is less immediate and dramatic, there can be no doubting the importance of the issue. Plastic microbeads are used, among other things, in the manufacture of personal care products, facial creams and more – and as a result have been polluting the water supply, in an increasingly dangerous way.

A petition launched on the Uplift platform aims to put the onus on government here to act to protect the rights not just of Irish citizens, but of people all over the world, as the proliferation of plastic creates an increasingly intolerable environmental burden internationally

“By shining a light on this issue,” Christy Moore says, “it makes it more likely that we will achieve the change we want to see."

Christy Moore has asked others to sign the petition, which calls on Ireland's Minister for Housing, Planning and Social Government to ban plastic microbeads.

The petition reads: "72% of sampled Irish drinking water is contaminated by microplastics. Fish that we eat have been shown to have consumed plastics. We are eating and drinking tiny fragments of plastic - this has become a human health issue of massive proportions.

The Government promised to ban microplastics within a year in 2016, but we are still waiting. Countries all over the world are taking action, and we can too. Eoghan Murphy, it's time to take decisive action and ban all products containing microplastics!

We're asking Eoghan Murphy to follow the lead of other countries across Europe and put in place a ban on the manufacture and sale of plastic microbeads in this country."

In recent days, Dr Peter Heffernan, CEO of the Marine Institute in Galway, confirmed that Ireland would ban the sale of microbeads by 2018, making the announcement on RTE Drivetime.

Make sure the Government keeps to its word and sign the petition here: uplift.ie