A Nationalist MSP has referred herself to Holyrood's presiding officer to consider if she breached parliamentary rules over expenses amid allegations over her private life.
Joan McAlpine said she was "very confident" that there had been no breach.
But she referred the matter to presiding officer Tricia Marwick for her consideration after a newspaper published a report on the matter and her private life.
The Daily Mail reported Ms McAlpine had used cash from her MSP's allowance to pay a female photographer whose husband she was alleged to have had an affair with.
Ms McAlpine said she had "no comment whatsoever" to make about the allegations concerning her private life.
She later repaid the money, saying today she was "perfectly entitled" to finance the work herself.
Ms McAlpine said: "It is entirely permissible to hire photographers for producing work for constituency publications. Equally I was perfectly entitled to decide in October 2012 to finance the work undertaken myself.
"In light of today's press coverage I am referring myself to the presiding officer to consider whether any breach of rules has taken place. I am very confident this is not the case. I will respect the due process of Parliament and suggest everyone else does the same."
She added: "I have no comment whatsoever to make on the reported allegations about my personal life."
A spokesman for Ms McAlpine also said it was "entirely appropriate and within the Scottish Parliament's rules to use parliamentary funds for services such as this".
He added: "In this case, Ms McAlpine repaid the funds to the Parliament in October 2012 at her own instigation because she didn't feel the volume of work eventually produced warranted the public expense."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article