A MEETING is to take place next week with a view to submitting a formal application for a license to exhume and reinter the remains of Roger Casement. 

The Roger Casement Commemoration and Re-interment Association (RCC&RA) are to meet with representatives from O'Neill's Funeral Directors and Phoenix Law in their quest to fulfil the Irish patriot's final wish and reinter his remains at Murlough Bay, outside Ballycastle. 

Alan Daly, Chairperson of the RCC&RA, explained that the idea first took root in the Casement Social Club on the Andersonstown Road a number of years ago.

"We put a plan together and formed an association with a constitution. We're non party-political and everyone is welcome. If anyone can help and come on board they're welcome.

The Association managed to get in touch with a blood relative of Roger Casement, James Casement, who lives in Arizona. After several meetings and discussions with him, James decided to throw his weight behind the plans.

"At present there is no opposition (to the plans)," said Alan. "We've been campaigning for this for the past four or five years. It was talked about and established in Casement Social Club. We were discussing it at the table one night and I said, 'Let's not talk about it, let's just do it.'"

Casement's love for Murlough Bay is well documented. When he was sentenced to death by hanging in a London court for his part in the 1916 Rising for the crime of high treason, he wrote to his cousin requesting to be buried at Murlough Bay.

Casement was buried in the prison cemetery at Pentonville Prison until, following an initial request from Eamon de Valera to Winston Churchill in 1953, his body was repatriated and reinterred in Glasnevin Cemetery in Dublin in 1965, following a state funeral.

"Roger Casement left his wish with his cousin Gertrude Bannister. It was the last request from Casement, in black and white," said Alan. 

"The political climate that existed back when Casement was repatriated from Pentonville to Glasnevin doesn't exist today.

"What we're doing is for Roger Casement. He was a humanitarian. Everything he did throughout the world. 

"But take Roger Casement's name out of the equation. Any man, woman or child, who has left a dying wish, there's no reason why that can't be honoured. This is a wrong that must be righted."