Rosianne Cutajar has been appointed president of the parliamentary health committee, two months after she was reprimanded by the House for an ethics breach.
She succeeds Labour MP Silvio Grixti who resigned from parliament last month.
A motion for Cutajar's appointment was moved in parliament on Monday by Deputy Prime Minister Chris Fearne and was not objected to by the Opposition.
It is the first appointment for Cutajar since her resignation from the post of parliamentary secretary for equality and an investigation by Standards Commissioner George Hyzler.
Parliament’s Committee for Standards in Public Life voted in November for Cutajar to face censure following an ethics investigation into her role in allegedly brokering a property deal with Yorgen Fenech and failing to declare her income from it.
Standards Commissioner George Hyzler found that the Labour MP most likely received a €46,500 brokerage payment through the deal and breached parliamentary ethical standards when she failed to declare her income from the 2019 property sale. She had also received a €9,000 sum, which she said was a birthday gift.
The parliamentary standards committee had adopted Grech's report and decided that she would be reprimanded by the House.
Cutajar had at the time expressed her reservations over the report’s findings, while saying she respected the committee and its decision to adopt the Hyzler investigation.
Cutajar insisted she had always acted in good faith and took her moral and ethical obligations as an elected representative very seriously.
Times of Malta revealed in July that the Tax Compliance Unit within the Inland Revenue Department had started an audit and accompanying investigation a few weeks after the newspaper first exposed the multi-million euro property agreement with Fenech back in December 2020.
Fenech stands accused of complicity in the murder of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia.
After the Hyzler report, Cutajar was removed from Cabinet and remained a backbench MP.
In October, she was also taken off Malta’s delegation to the parliamentary assembly of the Council of Europe, sparing her having to answer breach of conduct accusations before the council's rules committee.