Progressive Democrats Senator Fiona O'Malley is to resign as a director of a Co Galway arts trust, which is being investigated by gardaí following complaints about a planning application.
In an effort to get planning for developments on a site in Letterfrack for the Ellis Tate Centre for the Arts, a fellow director, Mari Savage, claimed the local priest, Fr John O'Gorman, had given permission for the centre to share a church car park.
The Garda investigation began after it emerged that a letter bearing the name of Fr O'Gorman to confirm this arrangement was signed on the his behalf without his knowledge.
Last night, Ms O'Malley said she had first been told that a problem existed with the planning application during the general election campaign, but Ms Savage had failed to withdraw the application, as she had promised.
The application had been lodged in the name of Ms O'Malley and Ms Savage because the original application for planning permission, which had lapsed, had been made in their names, Ms O'Malley said. "I haven't been active as a director for five, or seven years, and I did not know anything about the application until I was told in May by Bobby Molloy that there was a problem with it," she said last night.
Ms O'Malley became a director of the still-unopened arts centre project, which has received money from the American Ireland Fund, when she lived in Letterfrack during a six-month period spent in the west of Ireland after college.
"I do remember thinking about two years ago that it was time I got myself removed as a director because I wasn't involved, but I never got around to it because there was nothing happening. The company wasn't active," she said.
She said she was very annoyed with Ms Savage for having used her name in the planning application without her permission; for using the priest's name without his permission; and for then failing to withdraw the application in May as she had promised to do.
And she said she was not impressed that Ms Savage had had to apply for planning retention permission for works already carried out on the site: "People should obey the planning laws," she said.
Speaking from London last night, Ms Savage conceded that she had used Fr O'Gorman's name in a letter to the planners, but insisted that he had verbally agreed that the centre could use the church car park.
"The planners wanted it in writing. I went back to him and he got annoyed with me because I was asking him to put something in writing. He said, 'Haven't I told you that you can use the car park'?"
Fr O'Gorman, who is now based in Menlough, Ballinasloe, declined to comment when contacted last night by The Irish Times.