There is manifestly a greater onus on the state to account for its actions than terrorists turned politicians. Even so, you would think the way Adams has placed almost the entire onus on the British state to account for deaths during the Troubles in Northern Ireland might at least bring a blush to his cheeks. The IRA, let us not forget, killed nearly four times as many civilians as the security forces. Evidently this is not a consideration that seems to trouble Adams.

And here’s a reminder of the manner of so many of those deaths: car bombs set off in crowded places; part-time soldiers and policemen shot in the back or in front of their families; bombs in packed bars; the torture and cold-blooded execution of suspected informers. And for all Adams’s later talk about “my Protestant brothers and sisters” the IRA was also not above naked sectarianism, lining up Protestant workers to be machine-gunned just because they were Protestants.

Adams has acknowledged that “republicans inflicted great hurt”, so signing up to the Stormont House Agreement last year which provides a mechanism for “information retrieval” about the past, might seem like a bold step for him and Sinn Féin. The Independent Commission for Information Retrieval (ICIR) will “enable victims and survivors to seek and privately receive information about Troubles-related deaths of their next of kin”. Besides the police and Ministry of Defence, the ICIR will also approach paramilitaries for assistance.

But the IRA no longer exists as an organisation. And when it did, it did not keep records. So when it comes to questions such as which former members of the IRA ordered what IRA atrocity, the IRA’s heir Sinn Féin will legitimately be able to say it can only give very limited help. No doubt that will apply particularly to Adams since to this day he insists he was never in the IRA. “I am completely honest in that,” he says, with straight-faced chutzpah. “Gerry was a major, major player in the war yet he’s standing there denying it,” said his once close friend, the IRA commander Brendan “Darkie” Hughes, who died in 2008, and whose coffin Adams helped to carry.

However, the tables may yet be turned on all this obfuscation. Whilst the PSNI Chief Constable George Hamilton is candid enough to admit that collusion involved “something more” than just “a few bad apples” in the security forces, he is also weary of the one-sided focus on the past.

The Stormont House Agreement also established the Historical Investigations Unit and Hamilton recently allowed RTE to film a high security vault, containing millions of police documents which will assist HIU inquiries. Here lie many of the untold stories of the past. To date, the vault has only been explored for material relating to police and army activity. “I don’t think we should be exempt from scrutiny from investigation in the police service, past or present,” says Hamilton, “I think that’s good, if uncomfortable accountability, but I actually think other people have stories to tell and questions to answer.”

He means, of course, the IRA and loyalist paramilitaries. And while they may not have kept records, as Hamilton says: “We did keep records and I’m not just talking about intelligence documents, I’m talking about plans for covert operations, I’m talking about minutes of meetings.”

And then the Chief Constable adds, deadpan: “There will be material there that will present challenges for individuals and opportunities for investigators. That’s the way it works.”

We may yet see an end to the one-sided reckoning that has so far dominated the history of the Northern Ireland conflict.