In the early days of this week, while the news programmes were full of the £40.6 billion National Development Plan, other stories were struggling for attention. On RTE radio's Liveline, callers were queuing up to tell Joe Duffy about the anguish of cancer patients. They spoke of how people who are already ill and anxious are forced to travel hundreds of miles for basic treatment, taking them away from their families at a time when they most need them.

They talked of facilities so inadequate and over-stretched that radiotherapy machines keep breaking down. And oncologists explained that cancer survival rates in Ireland are lower than elsewhere in the developed world because thousands of people without private medical insurance do not receive treatment at all. One oncologist estimated that about 3,000 Irish people are dying unnecessarily from cancer every year.

In those days, too, there were other glimpses of a State that seemed very far from the rich nation of the National Development Plan.

In the Dail, a private member's debate was trying to draw attention to the plight of the families who are left to care for the 10 per cent of the population that lives with a disability.

It was pointed out that home helps, the State's main expression of solidarity with the 100,000 carers for people with disabilities, are paid £3 an hour - less than half the rate currently on offer for working on the checkout of a Dublin supermarket.

In the courts, the mother of an autistic child was fighting to obtain a basic education for her son. In The Irish Times, Vincent Browne was drawing attention to the 1998 report of the Inspector of Mental Hospitals, which suggests that patients are dying from improper use of drugs and describes peeling walls, bleak surroundings and sanitation so poor that patients have to "slop out" like prisoners.

When the plan is completed in 2006, its success will be judged by different kinds of criteria. People will want to know that it is possible to get to and from work without enduring a soul-destroying traffic jam or wrecking your car on potholes.

They will want to feel that a house to live in is not just a distant fantasy.

They will want the safe and affordable childcare that is essential to family life in an economy that demands that both parents work outside the home.

They will want a rail service that, when it ventures off the primary inter-city routes, offers the passenger more than a tiny niche in a slow-moving slum.

But they will also want the vaguer but no less essential satisfaction of being able to feel proud of Irish society. The pride that comes from being able to unveil a programme to spend £40.6 billion and know that almost all of it is our own money is very real. But, as we get used to the idea that we are now a privileged part of the First World, it will soon fade. We will need to be proud of having created a society with far less to be ashamed of than the Ireland of 1999.

SO the criteria for judging the National Development Plan have to go beyond bricks, mortar and expended billions. Does it articulate a vision of a just society? Does it reflect an awareness of the vast disparities that persist in what is now a wealthy State? Does it seek to mobilise the State to seize the opportunity that now presents itself for the creation of a genuinely inclusive democracy?

It was clear from the speeches made at the launch of the plan on Monday that the Government recognises there has been a fundamental shift in the way Irish society has to think about itself. For the first time, the fundamental questions are not about the allocation of scarce resources but about the purpose of prosperity.

The key resource is not money but vision. As the Tanaiste, Mary Harney, put it: "We have reached the happy situation in the affairs of our State where affordability is no longer a problem. We can no longer be constrained by a lack of resources, only by a lack of imagination."

But the imagination behind the plan remains in some respects critically constrained. One of its most serious limitations is in the way it envisages notions of fairness and equality. It is not that these ideals are absent, but that they are shaped by one fundamental perception - that equality is, first and foremost, not about people but about places.

In launching the plan, Bertie Ahern promised it would "end the regional imbalances which have disfigured modern Ireland", setting a goal that almost everyone will share. Mary Harney echoed these sentiments, stressing that the main aim was "to channel the benefits of economic development into the less developed regions of the country and to ensure that the fruits of prosperity are shared by all parts of Ireland".

But there are serious problems with this way of imagining the immediate future of Ireland.

One is that there is no coherent regional policy through which these aims can be pursued. The Spatial Development Strategy being designed by the Department of the Environment - essentially, the map that will give a direction to future growth - will be produced half-way through the term of the plan. Half of the journey, in other words, will be undertaken before we have a clear idea of where we are going. And even then, the plan shirks the tough task of picking the hubs around which growth is to occur.

Instead of strong regional hubs which will attract industries away from the east coast, we will have "gateways" that will somehow invite investment but then disperse it away from themselves. This sounds like nothing more or less than a plan to attract political capital and disperse political blame.

More fundamentally, there is the problem that not all inequality is a matter of regional location. The imbalances that have disfigured modern Ireland are not just those between regions. They are also those within regions. The fruits of prosperity need to be shared, not just between the "parts of Ireland" but between its citizens. There are many in the BMW (Border, Midland, West) region driving BMWs. Conversely, some of the worst concentrations of poverty are in Dublin, Cork and Limerick. The rate of attendance at third-level education - one of the key indicators of inclusion in the new economy - is, for example, far higher in Leitrim than in Dublin's inner city.

POVERTY and inequality, moreover, are often shaped by factors that are not purely related to a narrow definition of economic development: disability, illness and prejudice, for example. At one level, the plan does mark a breakthrough in the official recognition that development is about much more than the growth of GNP. There is a strong emphasis on the need to overcome educational disadvantage, not just in schools, but among those who have been failed by the system.

And there is evidence of a new realisation that health services are much more than an optional extra. The very act of including health in a national development plan for the first time does reflect a willingness, in the words of Brian Cowen, to "set aside the narrow view that health capital spending represents a drain of resources rather than an investment in the future".

But this recognition might have been expected to lead to clear and fundamental commitments. As a vision of where Irish society is going to be in seven years' time, the plan should be able to articulate some very basic guarantees. It is hardly a great deal to ask for a commitment that everyone diagnosed with cancer, regardless of income, will be given immediate treatment.

Or that every autistic child will be given an appropriate education.

Or that parents of mentally handicapped adults will not have to spend their declining years worrying about what will happen to their son or daughter when they die.

Or that mentally ill people will not be slopping out like Victorian criminals and will not be killed by wrongly administered drugs.

How much imagination does it take to understand that fundamental commitments like these would not merely give a clear shape to a vast capital programme but would also give the wider society a sense of where it is going?

Yet, the National Development Plan doesn't manage to set specific goals like these. Money will be spent on hospital facilities, on accommodation for the mentally ill, and on respite care for the intellectually disabled. But the plan does not contain either a detailed description of the resources that will be provided for people with disabilities or a statement of the basic conditions that vulnerable citizens of the new prosperous Ireland will have an absolute right to expect.

According to Brian Cowen on Monday, for example, the £2 billion investment in the health services will mean that by 2006 hospital waiting lists will be cut to 12 months for adults and six months for children. This is hardly an inspiring vision of a fair society.

Are we really happy to be working towards an Ireland in which a citizen with VHI or BUPA cover can expect hospital treatment for most illnesses almost at once, while a citizen dependent on the public system should regard a year's wait for treatment as a triumph for the State's progress?

And will we be left in 2006 with lots of lovely roads and no sense of direction?