Regional Development Minister Conor Murphy has told members of an Assembly committee that he stands by the sacking of four non-executive directors at NI Water.
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On Wednesday morning the Sinn Fein minister defended his actions when he spoke with members of the DRD committee for the first time since the suspension of permanent secretary Paul Priestly.
Mr Priestly was told to leave his desk less than 24 hours after a special UTV investigation into the controversial dismissals of the four non-executive directors.
Questions had been raised about the role the top civil servant played in the independent investigation which led to the sackings.
His suspension was announced after he admitted drafting a letter criticising three MLAs serving on the Public Accounts Committee.
Speaking at the meeting, Mr Murphy said: "My focus in all this has been to ensure that where issues which involved indefensible actions were brought to my attention they were investigated properly and evidence was gathered and dealt with, and with an upfront and transparent manner.
"That's what I intend to do and that's what I believe I did.
"I don't scrutinise every correspondence which come in or out of the department, but in all of this the actions taken by people in the department and by the Independent Review Team and myself were to get to the bottom of what was happening in NI Water."
Mr Murphy insisted that he has not watched the UTV programme and does not intend to.
Last month, the Head of the Northern Ireland Civil Service, Bruce Robinson, launched an investigation into the conduct of Mr Priestly.
The investigation is to be led by Sir John Shortridge, a retired Welsh Assembly official.
It will begin in early October and is hoped to be completed by the end of the month.
Speaking after the meeting, SDLP committee member Conall McDevitt said the minister did not display a firm grasp of what was happing in his department leading up to Mr Priestly's suspension.
"The minister demonstrated a worrying lack of understanding of some of the detail on events that took place in his department that lead to the finalisation of the Independent Review Team's report," he said.
"He appears to be arguing that the end justifies the means, in that there were serious problems in his department over procurement processes and the minister believes he has taken swift action to rectify that, irrespective of what happened in between.
"However, questions still remain over how the processes occurred.
"I asked the minister to supply the committee with all drafts on the report received by the department because I believe there is a continued need to get to the bottom of what happened and when."
Declan Gormley, Ruth Thompson, John Ballard and Chris Mellor from Northern Ireland Water were fired in March, after an internal audit revealed contracts worth millions of pounds had been improperly approved.
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