The 'Cred Jewellery' brand is the brainchild of UK jeweller Greg Valerio and will be sold in Boodles and Avoca jewellery stores in Dublin and Moore's in Cork by the end of this month. Ireland is just the second country in the world after the UK to stock the jewellery.

"Fifteen years ago, no one talked about fairtrade coffee, " Valerio told the Sunday Tribune. "Then suddenly everyone was talking about conflict diamonds. Gold is the next big thing that the big companies don't want to talk about. The gold industry is the Achilles heel of the big brands."

Valerio is working with the 'Green Gold' company in Colombia to source gold and platinum that has been mined in a socially and environmentally responsible way. He has also been asked to address a conference of Irish jewellers in October about the problems of child labour, exploitation and environmental devastation that are linked to gold-mining around the world.

"We've asked Greg Valerio to be the keynote speaker at the conference because we need to educate ourselves about this, " said Eileen Moore, president of the Retail Jewellers of Ireland - the largest body representing independent jewellers in the country.

"This is a very, very big issue.

Before I heard of Greg, I had never even thought about where gold was coming from.

And I would imagine that the same could be said for most Irish jewellers. It's not a question of not caring - it's not knowing. But it's definitely something we all need to think and educate ourselves about."

Valerio said that he is hoping to begin talks with the Catholic church about supporting the fairtrade movement.

"Every time a priest presides over a wedding, six tonnes of toxic waste is flushed into the earth from those wedding rings, " he said.