I READ with interest but little surprise your account of the mismanagement of the new ferries contract ("Holyrood launches probe into ferries fiasco as yard costs to double", The Herald, December 20). That there were problems with the running of the yard would seem to be without doubt. However, questions must also be asked of those who awarded and administered the contract.

Namely: what due diligence was undertaken prior to the award of a £97 million job to a yard which to paraphrase a Cmal spokesman was clearly out of its depth from day one? Why did they overpay the contractor, handing out some 85 per cent of the contract sum when one ship was a shell and the other barely that? Why did the yard continue to receive financial assistance when the briefest oversight would have indicated that this was throwing good money after bad?

The people of Arran are still waiting; business meetings missed, family events cancelled and those journeying to hospital left not knowing whether they will be able to attend their appointment or return home afterwards .

The new £31 million pier at Brodick is hopelessly compromised. Our new ferry is to cost in excess of £100m. Some £35m is to be spent making Ardrossan harbour suitable for the new, overly large, vessel which was never wanted and may never be finished. At what point will someone be held accountable for this catastrophic waste of public funds?

Meanwhile, Pentland Ferries has built a new 98-car ferry for some £15 million. On time, on budget and without subsidy. If Jim McColl is correct on only one thing it is that it would be cheaper to scrap hulls 801 and 802 and build three new , smaller , simpler vessels .

Gavin Fulton, Chair of Arran Ferry Action Group, Lamlash, Isle of Arran.

TO date the two new Calmac ferries have cost £83M in payments and a secured (on what?) loan of £45 million, all on an original budget of £97m. We now have an additional notional budget to completion of £110.3m-£114.3m on the existing hulks, giving us a total cost of approximately, please note the vagueness here, of £238m.

Pentland Ferries has just commissioned/put into service a new ferry, the MV Alfred. This has admittedly reduced capacity from the new Calmac ferries but at a total cost of £14m, this means that we could have had six new ferries based on the original costings as against two. Now multiply that out to include the new to completion budget of £238m and that gives us seventeen new ferries. Yes, the ferries were built in Vietnam where labour costs are considerably less, but surely not enough to merit such a variance of two as against 17 new ferries. No matter where the blame lies, at the end of the day our once-proud shipbuilding past has been well and truly trashed.

George Dale, Beith.