The Taoiseach has blamed a rogue official within Fine Gael for arranging to appoint John McNulty to the board of IMMA.
Enda Kenny's faced further questioning on the issue in the Dáil today - where he said the party official who arranged the appointment didn't inform the party's internal committees.
He said the appointment had been engineered by an official who had not informed the party's Executive Council, nor its subcommittee which was responsible for choosing the Seanad candidate, of the IMMA appointment.
Commenting in the Dáil, the Taoiseach said: "In the course of the validation process, preparing those criteria, the Fine Gael personnel did not go back to the Executive Council.
And I was upset about that, because it was set up for that exact purpose."
But he insisted that there was no formal instruction to Minister Humphreys to make the appointment.
"There was no instruction given to the Minister... she herself read his qualifications, read his credentials, and appointed him - as she was entitled to do - as a member of the Board," he said.
Fianna Fail's Micheal Martin had asked whether anyone from Fine Gael, or a government official, had "told" Minister Heather Humphreys to appoint McNulty to a cultural role.
Sinn Fein's Gerry Adams asked to know who the individual Fine Gael official was, or whether they had been authorised to send McNulty's CV to the minister - and claimed neither question had been answered.
Separately, John McNulty himself has said he first raised the prospect of being appointed to a state board not long after his defeat in the local elections in May.
"After that I had made it known that if a board opportunity came up, I would like to be appointed to a board. I never said any type of board.
"When I got offered the chance of the board [of the Irish Museum of Modern Art], I was delighted to take it," he added.
Today the Taoiseach again insisted that Mr McNulty had not discussed these aspirations with him when he was being interviewed for the Seanad position - and that they only came to light when McNulty was later engaging with Fine Gael party officials.
