When the information was finally sent to the Attorney General it was based on what the Comptroller and Auditor General refers to as a "retrospective memorandum" which was drawn up after the negotiations as they had not been documented. It is not standard Department of Education and Science procedure to fail to minute important discussions and meetings, especially if their outcome could be a matter for later Cabinet approval. Yet when the Comptroller and Auditor General sought papers on the negotiations that took place between the Department of Education and Science and the religious congregations, he discovered that no contemporaneous records of them were available. That surely cannot be acceptable or standard procedure at meetings of any Department.