FINANCE Minister Máirtín Ó Muilleoir was reappointed a director of Belfast Media Group just a fortnight after resigning in order to get paid a company pension.
The South Belfast MLA stepped down from the board of the company that owns the Andersonstown News in May, just days after joining the Stormont executive.
However, just over two weeks later he was reappointed as a director of the firm.
Opposition parties voiced concern over the move and warned of the need for the minister to "delineate" public and private roles.
Mr Ó Muilleoir, who as finance minister receives a salary of £86,000, spoke publicly on Sunday for the first time on BBC Radio Ulster's Inside Business about his resignation from Belfast Media Group and reappointment as a director.
When asked why he had resigned from the board and rejoined it after a matter of days, the minister said his accountant had advised him that he could not be paid his Belfast Media Group pension unless he was a director of the firm.
According to the assembly's register of interests, Mr Ó Muilleoir will receive around £10,000 from his private pension this year.
"What changed is I can't get paid my pension from Belfast Media Group if I'm not a director so my accountant said: 'You need to back on as a director'," he said.
The finance minister said he was "very happy to do so".
Listeners also heard Mr Ó Muilleoir again insist that he had no knowledge of the back channel involving Jamie Bryson and former Sinn Féin MLA Daithí McKay, who resigned hours after The Irish News exposed his dealings with the loyalist blogger ahead of last year's finance committee hearing into the sale of Nama's Project Eagle loan portfolio.
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The minister said he knew nothing about secret exchanges between Mr Bryson, Mr McKay and Sinn Féin worker Thomas O'Hara, in which the one-time flag protester was coached on where to make allegations against former First Minister Peter Robinson.
He said he would co-operate fully with the assembly's standards commissioner Douglas Bain, who has been tasked with investigating the matter.
"I am absolutely certain I will be vindicated without equivocation," Mr Ó Muilleoir said.
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Elsewhere during the BBC interview, the finance minister revealed that June's Brexit vote may force the executive to ditch plans for a long-term budget.
A key plank of last year's Fresh Start agreement was for the executive to put in place a budget for the entire five-year mandate up to to 2021.
However, according to Mr Ó Muilleoir the vote to leave the EU has resulted in "too much uncertainty".
He said a one-year budget was "the prudent way forward".
The minister said he also intended to draft a separate four-year budget for capital spending that would cover infrastructure projects such as the A5 and A6 roads.
