For many, the last vestige of controversy seeped away long ago from the nuts and bolts of settling the Northern peace. The scandalised are wearily cynical for the most part now, rather than inflamed, writes Fionnuala O Connor.
Even the sight of burly fellows confronting each other in a Carrickfergus housing estate last week, a pretty standard form of loyalist pre-feuding, raised no more than flickers of the old dread. The initial toll was low enough to ignore: one man stabbed and another, a part-time policeman who had slogged through 30 years of trouble, shot - neither seriously injured.
It was, of course, pure luck that the injuries were not worse, and a full-blown feud is still possible. But when Gerry Adams condemned the shooting of the policeman, it completed the impression of a new order.
He did laboriously add a caution against loyalist communities being penalised by government for the outbreak. So well he might, after all those years of complaint about exclusion of republicans, and since his party is now a senior partner in the new form of "government". Could his words also have been intended as a swipe, though, at the SDLP's sole Minister in Stormont? Margaret Ritchie, Minister for Social Development, insisted last month that the payment of grants promised to the UDA by direct-rule ministers - for "conflict transformation" schemes in six loyalist districts - depend on an end to criminality and on decommissioning. Fair enough, surely? Having reaped an accusation of "witch-hunt" from UDA "senior brigadier" Jackie McDonald, Ritchie did add that she would be discussing the matter with the other Ministers.
Even the bored may open one eye to see what happens next. So many strange deals have been done that some slip by with little fuss; and there is something strange in making grants at the UDA's request. By all accounts the group is a shambles - vying lordlings jealous of each other's power and potential wealth. But the International Monitoring Commission, which goes in for understatement, as well as finding extortion, drug dealing and loan-sharking has credited senior figures with trying to steer the UDA towards "community development and democratic politics". They also noted that in some areas extortion, drug-dealing and loan-sharking were on the wane.
This must have encouraged direct rule ministers, as they prepared to announce that stg£1.2 million (€1.8 million) would be paid over three years to help the UDA's further "transformation". Government approaches have combined some stick with hefty carrot. A number of loyalist chieftains have been jailed, their loot confiscated. More questionably, others have been forced out by former friends with clear official approval, in some cases with police escort to the ferry.
However mixed their report card, UDA spokesmen feel entitled to scoff at the idea of giving up weapons. As McDonald did, in his complaint about Ritchie. He saw a simple equation. It had taken years to "get the IRA's guns", therefore loyalist decommissioning would be "a slow process. 'You can't be saying there's your £1.2 million, now where's your guns' ". Moreover, he was right. When the money was first promised nobody said that, nor anything like it. There were only the vaguest conditions, which did not include decommissioning. Government funds have sluiced into paramilitary coffers before, bypassing the social needs they were meant to address. Yet, how does one justify withholding potentially useful training "schemes" in areas with chronic social problems, where people have lost heart because they live in grim estates dominated by paramilitaries.
The quandary of loyalism is horribly circular. Sinn Féin is the IRA's conflict transformation programme - a resounding success in the North, whatever about Dáil elections. Minus violence, republicans found a niche as competition for the SDLP. But old-style Paisleyism and more sedate Ulster unionism covered the unionist waterfront. Loyalist "fringe" parties could not expand the market because paramilitaries failed to convince voters that they could transform themselves. Their criminality blighted their development. Yet who could wean UDA members off crime that provides income and status when nothing else in their lives will generate that sort of living.
It took until last year for republicans to stop robberies, even though probably few IRA members were siphoning off a share of the proceeds for their own use; and even though republicans could offer at least some ex-gunmen the alternative rewards of politics.
Republicans were helped and helped again, flattered and feted. They were also able to help themselves. Loyalists lack that ability for many reasons, so the help has to be even more blatant.
It's a crude business, making peace. A little like the joke about giving directions in which the person giving directions sighs and says the starting point is a bad one. A flash of outrage at loyalist cheek every now and then might just quench some arrogance and prevent some waste. But where we are is the starting point.