There have been persistent claims from boys abused at Kincora and human rights organisations that military intelligence and the RUC knew about the rape of children in care but used the information to blackmail the paedophiles, forcing them to spy on fellow loyalists.
At Westminster the loyalists look at the likes of Nadine Dorries, "Mad Nad" to her detractors, and shake their heads in despair.
Among the police officers hurt was a woman injured on the hand and another female officer hurt as loyalists smashed up cars belonging to councillors, including that of a Democratic Unionist, and attacked security staff.
On Tuesday, Laura McNamee, a fellow Alliance party member councillor said she had been forced to leave her home in east Belfast due to threats from extreme loyalists over the city hall flag vote.
In it, McKearney argues that the IRA offer effectively marks the end of the Provisionals' war and that putting weapons beyond use is 'decommissioning by other means.' But the strategy of using republican voices to win over loyalists may fall on deaf ears.
The trouble with this is that it risks provoking the very sectarian conflict Sinn Féin (alongside others, including working-class loyalists) has been successfully preventing in flashpoint areas all around Belfast in recent years.
The SDLP accused Mr Adams of deploying the same argument as those who oppose an inquiry into allegations of security force collusion in the 1989 killing of solicitor Pat Finucane by loyalists.
In the senate on Wednesday, centre-left MPs from the Democratic party (PD) combined with the anti-establishment Five Star Movement (M5S) and others to approve the expulsion – to the obvious rage of Berlusconi loyalists.
Dolores Kelly, the SDLP's justice spokeswoman and a member of Northern Ireland Policing Board, said: "This was the week when the former head of the Stevens inquiry team investigating collusion revealed at the Billy Wright inquiry that RUC Special Branch failed to let people know they were being targeted by loyalists, some of whom were subsequently shot dead.
At the time, the RUC was facing the enmity of not only the Provisional IRA but also extreme loyalists, who were burning police officers out of their homes because the force had been asked to physically defend the new Anglo-Irish Secretariat building on the outskirts of east Belfast.
The violence spread to east Belfast after loyalists returning from a protest at city hall attacked the Catholic enclave of Short Strand, hijacking a bus on the Albertbridge Road and confronting police.
