The Marshall Review

There is a question that hovers over many public debates in Ireland, appearing briefly before disappearing again beneath discussions of budgets, targets, investment strategies and economic forecasts.

It is a simple question: 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 I cannot answer it. I can describe individual policies. I can point to housing targets, renewable energy ambitions, infrastructure programmes and educational reforms. I 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 national 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 may be 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 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.

Today we still benefit from the consequences of that act. The physical structures remain. More importantly, the confidence that produced them remains visible across almost a century. The question is not whether we need another Ardnacrusha. The question is whether we possess any equivalent idea of the future.

If we do, it is remarkably difficult to identify. 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 answer the deeper question of what kind of country we hope to become.

Perhaps this explains why debates about major projects often feel strangely unsatisfying. Whether discussing a sporting event, a transport system, a research initiative or a cultural institution, arguments frequently 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 questions.

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.

This is why I find myself returning to examples such as Ardnacrusha, or even to something as apparently modest as the naming of the research vessel Tom Crean. Such gestures imply an orientation towards the future. They suggest curiosity, exploration and a confidence that there are horizons worth pursuing.

They do not merely celebrate what has been achieved. They point towards what might yet be achieved. Ireland possesses many stories. Perhaps more than most nations. We tell stories of emigration and return. Stories of literature, music, exploration and invention. Stories of struggle and resilience. Stories of remarkable individuals. Yet stories are not quite the same thing as a vision. A vision assembles stories into a direction.

Maybe that is what feels absent.

I am not certain that Ireland lacks a vision. It may simply be hidden, fragmented or unspoken. It may exist in pieces across science, culture, education, energy, the sea, technology and community life, waiting to be recognised as parts of the same picture. Or perhaps we have become so preoccupied with administration that we have lost the habit of imagining. If so, the challenge is not to produce a grand plan. It is first to recover the question:

What would it mean for Ireland to possess a vision of itself, twenty-five years from now?

If such a vision existed, how would we recognise it? What institutions, capabilities, landscapes or cultural gestures would express it? And what would we need to believe about ourselves in order to begin building it?

I have no answer. For the moment, the question seems more important.

David Marshall Dublin