A total of 139 full files and 12 incomplete files were still missing from the Department of Finance last night, following a search that unearthed an additional three during the day.
Embarrassed at the failure to produce all the files sought by the Moriarty Tribunal, the Department is expected to publish the list of missing documents after seeking legal advice from the Attorney General as well as the permission of the inquiry chairman.
The Minister for Finance, Mr McCreevy, will today provide the tribunal with the list of all the relevant files, including the missing documents.
As Opposition parties demanded to know why the Minister did not inform the tribunal over the last three months that the files could not be found, civil servants continued to search a number of buildings for the papers.
Most of the search centred on Government Buildings itself but staff also went through documents in four other premises used by the Department of Finance. A Government spokesman said that "man years" had been spent on the search since January.
Stores and offices formerly used by the Department have also been searched in the quest to recover the files. Government sources said some of the documentation may have got lost when the Department moved premises over the years, while more may have been subsumed into other files.
Last December, the tribunal investigating payments to Mr Charles Haughey and Mr Michael Lowry served an Order of Production on the Minister for documents on the operation of exchange controls from 1954 to 1993.
Only five of the missing files relate to the period when Mr Haughey was Minister for Finance, from November 1966 to May 1970. The former Taoiseach was unavailable for comment last night.
After Mr McCreevy instructed his Department to produce the relevant documents, it emerged that "despite the most strenuous efforts", some of the files relating to exchange controls could not be found. Mr McCreevy denied any suggestion that he or his Department was seeking to deny access to the tribunal.
But Fine Gael's finance spokesman, Mr Michael Noonan, demanded to know why the tribunal had not been informed. Saying he had no evidence of anything "sinister", he said Mr McCreevy should have made a statement.
According to Labour's spokesman on finance, Mr Derek McDowell, the Minister has serious questions regarding the missing files "debacle". Mr Pat Rabbitte of Democratic Left said it was inexplicable that such vital files could apparently disappear into thin air.