Former industrial relations trouble-shooter Mr Phil Flynn has stepped down as a non-executive director of the property firm Harcourt Developments Ltd as controversy continues over the Garda investigation into alleged money laundering by the republican movement.
A statement for Harcourt said: "Mr Flynn indicated to the media that he was reviewing his public and private commitments to avoid unwarranted media intrusion into the affairs of his various non-related business activities.
"Having reviewed those commitments, Mr Flynn notified his fellow Harcourt directors of his decision to resign."
Mr Flynn had already resigned as chairman of the Government committee on decentralisation, as chairman of Bank of Scotland (Ireland), and as a director of the VHI after being questioned last week by the Criminal Assets Bureau about his non-executive directorship of Chesterton Finance Company Ltd, the company at the centre of the money-laundering investigation.
Harcourt chairman Mr Pat Doherty said: "Phil has taken a course of action which reflects his esteem and consideration for Harcourt and his fellow directors and we thank him for his contribution.
"Harcourt Developments operates to the highest standards of corporate probity and good business practice and will continue to do so. Erroneous and misleading press commentary is as distracting as it is hurtful to business people who are not connected in any way to the activities being currently investigated."
Mr Flynn has denied any role in money laundering, describing Chesterton as, in his view, "clean".
Meanwhile, Bank of Scotland (Ireland) has named Sir Ron Garrick, deputy chair of HBOS plc, as its new chairman.
In a separate development, Mr Flynn moved to clarify his relationship with Sinn Féin after last week describing himself as an "unrepentant republican".
Speaking to The Irish Times, he said he remained a supporter of the party "but not in an unqualified way".
"I supported Mary Lou McDonald in the European Parliament elections but I would not support them unconditionally," said the former Sinn Féin vice president, who said he left the party in around 1987.
Mr Flynn was commenting after the former minister for health, Mr Barry Desmond, expressed "surprise" at the manner in which Mr Flynn described himself as an unrepentant republican "without qualification".
Mr Desmond, who crossed swords with Mr Flynn in the 1980s over the latter's membership of Sinn Féin, said "it surprised me because I thought that Phil Flynn's political development had grown beyond this standard statement of Sinn Féin people, that 'I am an unrepentant republican'.
"That was the kind of statement I heard in the pubs in Cork before I left Cork in 1956-57 when the original IRA campaign was starting," said Mr Desmond.
Asked why he hadn't qualified the remark, Mr Flynn replied: "I didn't get an opportunity, and secondly that report was edited. Basically what I was saying was, 'I am not running away from anything, I was not hiding anything'. That was it."
Mr Desmond also yesterday explained why he took such a strong stance against meeting Mr Flynn in 1984 when the latter had been elected general secretary of the Local Government and Public Services Union.
"I found it reprehensible that I should have to sit at a meeting with the vice-president of Sinn Féin, even though he had distanced himself from some of the bombings, and so on, and some of the extreme acts." Because he had to meet families whose fathers had been shot by the IRA, "I said at the time that it was 'an act of public hygiene' that I would not meet him," Mr Desmond said.
