The businessman who rescued the shipyard behind the ferries fiasco believes the cost of the project is likely to exceed £340 million.
Jim McColl, who was ranked tenth on the 2017 Sunday Times Rich List in Scotland, ran the Ferguson Marine in Port Glasgow after he stepped in to save the site in a deal brokered by Alex Salmond eight years ago.
The following year it won a £97 million contract to build the two vessels for the public fleet which was supposed to herald a new dawn for commercial shipbuilding on the Clyde.
Instead four years later the yard again collapsed into insolvency because of the soaring costs associated with the disastrous ferry contract.
McColl has been a vociferous critic of the actions of