There is a phrase that appears frequently in Irish public life whenever discussions turn to housing, infrastructure, energy, education or regional development. It is usually followed by immediate agreement. Yes, we need a vision. Yes, we need long-term thinking. Yes, we need to look beyond the next election.
Yet the phrase leaves me uneasy. Not because it is wrong, but because it may be asking the wrong question. What if Ireland does not lack vision at all? What if the real question is: What happened to our imagination? Modern public debates in Ireland routinely hover over a deeper, simpler question before letting it disappear beneath a sea of budgets, targets, investment strategies and economic forecasts:
What is Ireland trying to become?
Not next year. Not after the next election. Not by the end of a ten-year development plan. What is the Ireland we are building for twenty-five years from now? I ask because I increasingly find that our public discourse cannot answer it. We can describe individual policies. We can point to housing targets, renewable energy ambitions, infrastructure programmes and educational reforms. We can identify areas where governments hope to improve outcomes. Yet none of these amount to a picture of the future.
They are actions without an image.
The distinction matters. A vision is not a collection of projects; it is the reason the projects exist. The great undertakings that continue to resonate across generations were rarely justified solely by their practical benefits. They embodied an idea of the future. The Sydney Harbour Bridge was not merely a transport solution; it represented a belief in a growing and connected city. The Oslo Opera House was not simply a performance venue; it expressed confidence in Norway’s cultural future. Even the Louvre Pyramid, controversial when proposed, signalled a France willing to place contemporary ambition within a historic setting.
Closer to home, Ardnacrusha remains the most important example Ireland possesses.
When work began on the Shannon Scheme, the Irish Free State was poor, young and uncertain. Yet it undertook one of the most ambitious engineering projects of its era. Looking back, the achievement was not simply the physical generation of electricity. It was the willingness of a newly independent state to imagine an electrified future and then commit itself to making that future real. Ardnacrusha was not merely infrastructure. It was an act of national imagination.
For much of its history, Ireland was powered by such acts. The generation that sought independence imagined a country that did not yet exist. The generation that built the institutions of the State imagined a functioning nation where previously there had only been aspiration. Later generations imagined a different Ireland, one connected to Europe, open to trade and investment, and capable of offering opportunities that previous generations could only seek abroad.
Many of those ambitions were realized. Perhaps that very success has created an unexpected problem. For decade upon decade, Ireland knew what it was trying to do. It was trying to become free; it was trying to become prosperous. Today, Ireland is among the wealthiest countries in Europe. The language of economic catch-up no longer carries the same urgency. We have spent decades climbing a mountain, only to discover that reaching the summit does not answer the question of where to go next.
Prosperity, it turns out, is not a destination.
It is a capability. And capabilities raise further questions. A wealthy country can build more houses, but what kind of communities is it trying to create? A wealthy country can build renewable energy infrastructure, but what sort of landscape does it wish to leave behind? A wealthy country can invest in education and research, but to what end?
Ireland speaks fluently about growth. It speaks less fluently about purpose. Economic success, welcome though it is, cannot itself constitute a national vision. GDP is not a destination. Foreign investment is not a story. Tourism is not a philosophy. These are outcomes. Useful outcomes, certainly, but they do not tell us why.
Perhaps this explains why debates about major projects often feel strangely unsatisfying. Whether discussing a transport system, a research initiative or a cultural institution, arguments quickly return to measurable returns. How much revenue will it generate? How many visitors will it attract? What is the economic impact? These are legitimate questions, but they are not the only ones.
Some things are valuable because they transform our understanding of ourselves. Some institutions matter because they endure. Some projects create capabilities that future generations inherit. Some things enrich a society in ways that resist measurement.
A nation that asks only what a thing costs, eventually forgets how to ask what a thing means.
Every significant achievement begins as a vision of some kind. Before it became a bridge, a university, a port, or a power station, it existed as imagination. Someone looked beyond the present and asked: What if? Modern life encourages a relentless focus on the immediate. Elections, news cycles, quarterly results and social media all reward short horizons. The next headline is always more urgent than the next generation.
Does this explain why discussions about the future often feel so fragmented? We talk about housing in one room, energy in another, transport somewhere else and education somewhere else again. Each conversation is important, yet the larger picture remains elusive. We rarely stop to ask what kind of Ireland all these efforts are intended to create. Maybe we have mistaken administration for direction.
Maybe we have become so concerned with managing the present that we have neglected the task of imagining the future.
Or perhaps the imagination is still there, scattered across communities, universities, businesses, arts organisations, local initiatives and public institutions, waiting to be assembled into a more coherent picture. Even contemporary, modest gestures, like the naming of the research vessel Tom Crean, suggest an orientation towards the future. They imply curiosity, exploration, and a confidence that there are horizons worth pursuing.
The first step is simpler than drafting a grand strategy or a national plan: it is to recover the habit of asking larger questions. What should a successful Ireland feel like in 2050? What capabilities should it possess? What should future generations inherit? What would make us proud of the country we leave behind? These questions may never produce unanimous answers. That is not their purpose.
Their purpose is to remind us that nations are shaped first by imagination, and only later by policy and action.
David Marshall
Skerries