While a deportation order remains in place in the Agho case, officials at the Garda National Immigration Bureau have agreed to reconsider evidence that the infant would not receive the necessary medical treatment if he was deported with his mother to Lagos.

Leslie was diagnosed in November 2005 with a potentially fatal disease, Mucocutaneous Lymph Node Syndrome (Kawasaki Disease). Dr Cormac Breatnach, a paediatric specialist at Waterford Regional Hospital, has described the child's condition as "potentially life-threatening and can lead to cardiac complications that may cause significant illness or death many years after the initial illness".

Despite the medical evidence presented to officials at the Department of Justice, as revealed in the Sunday Tribune last week, they had threatened to go ahead with deporting the mother and her infant child to Nigeria. Rather than exercise his ability to allow the baby remain in Ireland on humanitarian grounds, the officials for justice minister Michael McDowell advised the Agho legal team that the disease could be treated with aspirin. In a handwritten note on Evelyn Agho's file, a department of justice official wrote they were "not satisfied that the additional information was of a significance as to cause the minister to alter his decision".

Evelyn Agho arrived in Ireland in January 2005. She gave birth to Leslie on 9 June 2005.

McDowell signed a deportation order for the mother and her child last November. A decision in the case is expected this week.