Gardaí in Co Kerry have located a seven-year-old boy who was left behind after his parents and younger brother were deported to Romania on Wednesday night.
Some 58 Romanians, most of them failed asylum seekers, were deported on a charter flight to Bucharest on Wednesday night.
Gardaí said the operation, the first mass deportation since the controversial removal of 35 Nigerians last March, went "without incident".
The missing boy, Eduardo Covaci, who has lived with his family in Tralee, Co Kerry, for three years, was staying at his aunt's house.
Gardaí confirmed yesterday evening they had been searching for the boy. Chief Supt Tony McNamara said the plan was to deport him, and to reunite him with his parents in Romania.
Niall Sheerin, a solicitor representing two men who were deported on the flight, said his clients were arrested and jailed upon arriving in Bucharest. He planned to begin legal proceedings seeking their return in the High Court today.
Those deported on the flight which left at 11.30pm included 40 men, 10 women and eight children. They had been arrested around the country, but mostly in Dublin.
As well as failed asylum seekers, they included Romanians who were refused leave to enter Ireland, and others who had agreed to voluntary repatriation.
Many were deported under the new fast-track asylum process which provides for the processing of cases from Romania and four other countries within three weeks of being made.
Eduardo Covaci was collected from the Holy Family school in Balloonagh, Tralee, minutes before officers of the Garda National Immigration Bureau arrived to deport him. His parents and younger brother were told they were being deported after they went to Tralee Garda station for their weekly signing.
Grainne Landers, co-ordinator of Trasnet, a support service for asylum seekers and refugees in Tralee, has been in contact with relatives of the deported family.
She said Trasnet would also like to call into question the manner in which the deportation was attempted. Garda immigration officials had arrived at the school "in full view" of other children who were on their lunch break.
Her information was that no great attempt was made by gardaí to locate the child, but his family, including his father Mihai Tejlas, his mother Samanta Covaci and four-year-old brother Ricardo, were taken to Dublin, along with a number of other asylum seekers from Tralee whose applications had failed.
Ms Landers said Eduardo's mother made frantic phone calls to relatives and friends at 4am when she arrived in Bucharest. It is understood she may have tried to resist being put on board the plane without her eldest son.