One of Scotland’s £340m ferries which is already five years late may not even set sail in early 2024, meaning it will be languishing at Ferguson Marine for almost 10 years.

Scottish Government transport minister Jenny Gilruth failed to confirm whether Hull 802 would be ready for passengers by its new completion date.

It is a further blow for islanders who have been waiting for that vessel and its sister ship Glen Sannox for about five years considering they were due to be in service by 2018.

The cost of both ferries has also sky-rocketed from £97m to £340m with this price expected to rise even higher. It follows numerous difficulties in building them at Ferguson Marine, which went into administration and had to be nationalised.

Even now, the shipyard is suffering money difficulties and was threatened with a strike-off notice by Companies House for filing late accounts.

Ms Gilruth was asked at Holyrood what the government was doing to help angry islanders who have suffered years of delays and infrequency of ferries and were warned to expect two more years of this by CalMac’s chief executive Robbie Drummond.

This is due to a lack of new ships being available to the ferry operator, with the current ageing fleet suffering reliability issues and no newly-build ones due until later on this year, if the Glen Sannox is even ready then.

Want to see more SNP fails? – Politics Matters