It is no surprise to read of past attempts to placate the IRA by UK and Irish governments

Later that year, after the IRA ceasefire, some IRA prisoners were released on licence.

Today we report on newly declassified files that say a Republic of Ireland civil servant told the UK embassy in 1996 that Ireland was not condemning IRA killing for political reasons.

More revelations along these lines are likely in coming years.

Certainly since the 1990s, probably since the 80s, and possibly since the 70s UK and Ireland governments have worked behind the scenes to woo the IRA from violence. Some contacts at the height of the Troubles are common knowledge, such as flying IRA leaders to London in 1972 (a generosity of approach towards that terror organisation that was rewarded with the Bloody Friday massacre in Belfast months later).

The 1985 Anglo Irish Agreement did not cause the Republic to get tough with the IRA, as London naively thought it would (on Monday we reported Margaret Thatcher’s dismay at Irish security failures in 1990). The 1998 Belfast Agreement was followed by tardy decommissioning. There were howls of protest from Dublin when the UK suspended Stormont in 2002.

And that is the pattern: republicans misbehave, and everyone is punished. The Castlereagh break-in, Stormont spying, the Northern Bank robbery, murders of Robert McCartney, Paul Quinn, Kevin McGuigan. Nothing leads to sanction.

Sinn Fein were allowed to collapse Stormont in 2017 until they got their political demands, which of course they did.

Meanwhile, Tony Blair launched a secret IRA On The Runs scheme. Yet elderly soldiers face homicide trials for shootings in the Troubles that were not pre-meditated.

A recent Independent Reporting Commission did not even mention a security view that the IRA still gathers intelligence.

It is a far reaching, indeed never ending scandal.

And nothing changes. The Lambeth Palace secret talks suggested that the government is keen both to end veteran trials and to placate republicans on legacy.

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