Representatives of the Roger Casement Commemoration and Re-interment Association will meet next week with O'Neill's Funeral Directors and Phoenix Law to prepare a formal application for a licence to exhume and reinter Roger Casement's remains at Murlough Bay, near Ballycastle.

The association was formed in the Casement Social Club on Andersonstown Road a number of years ago, according to chair Alan Daly. He said the group is non-party-political and open to all.

The group contacted James Casement, a blood relative in Arizona, who has given his support after several meetings and discussions.

Daly said there is currently no opposition to the plan and that the campaign has been active for four or five years.

Casement's wish to be buried at Murlough Bay is documented. After being sentenced to death for high treason following the 1916 Rising, he wrote to his cousin Gertrude Bannister asking to be buried there.

His remains were buried in Pentonville Prison cemetery and later repatriated to Glasnevin Cemetery in Dublin after a state funeral in 1965. This followed a request made in 1953 by Eamon de Valera to Winston Churchill.

Daly said the political climate at the time of that earlier repatriation no longer exists. He argued that any dying wish should be honoured, regardless of the person, and that this is a wrong which must be righted.