Boy’s Irish adoption ‘may not be legal’

THE adoption of a three-year-old Indonesian boy by an Irish man and his wife, who later left him in a Jakarta orphanage, may not have been legal, Foreign Minister Dermot Ahern has conceded.

Indonesian child welfare officials have been working with Irish Government officials to determine whether his adoption was authorised after the Indonesian Ministry of Social Affairs said the adoption hadn’t followed proper procedures and that Tristan, an Irish citizen, could face deportation.

“It may not have been fully legal. We must unblock the legal situation and allow this child to be adopted,” Mr Ahern said last night.