The Finance Minister is defending the Government's move to scrap the Cook Strait mega-ferries - and claimed costs would have blown out on the original project.

The Hyundai dockyard contracted to build the boats has received a total $222 million for the canned project, which includes a net $144 million final settlement.

$300 million had been provisioned.

Nicola Willis says the plans were not progressing well - and they were tied up in all sorts of additional complications. 

"There was a very reasonable reality that the port side of the infrastructure would not have been built in time for the ferries to have arrived, and that, therefore, they wouldn't have been able to be used."

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