Missing Stormont files: This week the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland in Belfast released several hundred files relating to 1974 under the 30 years rule.
One of the main series of files relates to the power-sharing executive of January-May 1974.
These range over the Ulster Workers' Council strike, meetings between the Stormont executive and the secretary of state, meetings between the executive and the Irish government of Liam Cosgrave and contacts between Brian Faulkner as chief minister and the Taoiseach during that period.
However, the actual day-by-day minutes of the executive, recording ministerial views and decisions, have mysteriously "gone missing".
A spokesman for the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland has confirmed the failure of his staff "so far" to locate these vital documents. This is the first occasion in 20 years of covering the Stormont cabinet files for this newspaper that I found such a tranche of vital historical material to have been unaccounted for. It is true that extracts of the minutes of a few executive meetings have been copied in other secretariat files.
However, the views of particular ministers on such issues as Austin Currie's (minister for housing) introduction of punitive levy on "rents and rates strikers" or the late Basil McIvor's (minister for education) proposals for integrated education are not currently available.
Senator Maurice Hayes, who served the executive as a senior civil servant in 1974, believes that he may have a copy of the minutes in his files.
He recalls the "funereal atmosphere and mixed feelings" which shrouded the administration's downfall in May 1974.
"I remember going up to Sir David Holden, the head of the Northern Ireland Civil Service and, I suppose, my boss to tell him of the impending collapse of the executive. "He was, in his meticulous way, correcting the draft minutes of the last executive meeting in pencil. He heard my news without remark and went on with his task - I had just thought he would like to know."
Meanwhile, the search for the missing files continues at Stormont.