The Adoption Board is to send a social worker and senior official to Indonesia to help unravel the international legal tangle surrounding three-year-old Tristan Dowse.
Officials will visit the boy in the orphanage outside Jakarta where he has been living for the last year and are expected to carry out a welfare assessment of the child.
In a further attempt to expedite the process, Minister for Foreign Affairs Dermot Ahern has also asked a legal official to join the Irish Ambassador to Singapore, Hugh Swift, who is in Indonesia this week monitoring the situation.
Government sources are hopeful that the legal status of the boy can be resolved in a matter of weeks.
There is still confusion over whether the adoption of Tristan by Irishman Joe Dowse and his wife, Lala, was legal.
Indonesian authorities are due to go to court shortly to try to rescind what they believe was an illegal adoption. They believe it was not valid, partly because there was no letter from the Indonesian ministry of social affairs.
If the child is found to have been illegally adopted, the Adoption Board in Ireland may go to the High Court to quash the adoption here if that is deemed to be in his best interests. This process could also involve revoking the boy's citizenship.
A US couple based in Indonesia, who have visited the three-year-old in the orphanage where he lives, have expressed an interest in adopting him.
A spokesman for Mr Ahern said he was keen to resolve the "legal limbo" surrounding Tristan, after which time his future wellbeing could be decided on.
Tristan was adopted by Irishman Joe Dowse and his wife Lala when he was two months old but was left at the Imanuel orphanage outside Jakarta two years later.
His parents have now left Indonesia and are living in Azerbaijan. As the adoption was certified by the Adoption Board, Tristan is an Irish citizen and has an Irish passport.
The boy remains in the orphanage, speaking and understanding only English.
The Irish Ambassador said the orphanage, which he visited last week, appeared to be well-resourced and the boy seemed to be in good health, according to Government sources.
The solicitor who represents Joe and Lala Dowse, Wicklow-based Augustus Cullen, refused to comment when contacted yesterday.
The registrar at the Adoption Board, Kiernan Gildea, told The Irish Times that the involvement of the couple in the legal process would help to make the resolution of the adoption more straightforward.
