DUP colleagues of Ian Paisley jnr may have moved to press for his resignation had he not done so voluntarily.
East Antrim MP Sammy Wilson praised the junior minister for his decision to quit the office, which he had held for 10 months, claiming he had done the right thing at the right time.
However, he also told BBC Northern Ireland: "Had he not reached that decision independently then the question is, would we have encouraged him to make that [ decision] and I think that, yes, in any party that would have been the case."
Mr Wilson, whose MP colleagues had discussed the issue during a weekend meeting in Lisbon, did not make clear whether a move against the junior minister would have come from the Westminster group or from party officers.
Peter Weir, Assembly member for North Down, who is among those tipped to replace Mr Paisley jnr as a minister, declined to comment on the affair. But he suggested it was up to party officers to press for a resignation.
Mr Paisley jnr, meanwhile, has stood by his claim that the Assembly Ombudsman had cleared him of any wrongdoing.
The Assembly's committee on standards and privileges said yesterday it had not exonerated him. The complaint against Mr Paisley jnr raised by SDLP Assembly member Declan O'Loan was outside its remit, it added.
"It is clear in the letter to the committee by Tom Frawley, Interim Commissioner for Standards, that he didn't consider whether the actions complained of were a breach of the ministerial code as the code doesn't come under the remit of the Committee on Standards and Privileges," the committee said.