We need to have a vision to reach for

SOCIETY needs big ideas. It needs a vision. It needs people with that vision.

To a certain extent we all need that big idea or vision. A roadmap for the future.

At every level of society we have it. Corporations have short, medium and long term plans. Football clubs have the same and you see this right across the sport at various levels.

Dublin GAA had a plan which has now yielded fruits with their team going for a third successive All Ireland senior football title. The plan took time to develop but the structures were put in place and now there is a conveyor belt of playing talent which is keeping Dulbin at the top of the sport.

Hoffenheim, the German football team who are playing Liverpool in the last round of the Champions League Qualifiers second leg tie in Anfield on Wednesday night where playing fifth tier football in Germany not so long ago, but a software billionaire owned the club and had a vision which has brought them to where they are today.

On a less grand scale, Stephen Kenny has a vision for Dundalk Football Club. He wants the Lilywhites to be seeded in European club football draws which will boost their chances of returning to the Group stages of the Europa League or even progressing to the Group stages of the Champions League.

Big picture, big ideas can work, but the crucial thing is that you need the vision and of course, the visionaries.

Locally the provision of cycle lanes was a vision which was solid and well founded, but the implementation and execution was poor and the end result is a mish mash of cycle lanes scattered around the town with no willpower from the local authority to further invest in the vision.

At the weekend there was a very interesting idea floated by David McWilliams in his weekend column in the Irish Independent.

He suggested moving Dublin Port out of the city to a new location at Beamore near Balbriggan and convert the 600 acres currently devoted to port activities to a new district for the city, helping to address the housing crisis on land close to the city centre.

It seems a very practical solution, which has been successfully implemented in other cities in northern Europe.

Nationally and on a more local level, we need more of this type of thinking and leadership with new solutions for our problems and challenges in society.

Instead of tinkering on the edges of issues we need more blue sky thinking, more vision and to encourage visionaries to speak out more.