ON GAELIC GAMES:IT WAS Noel Whelan of this parish, who made the point while talking to Marian Finucane on RTÉ radio at the weekend. In setting the scene for his recently- published book on Fianna Fáil's travails, Whelan said that national institutions can't assume they'll survive just because they always have.

Citing the Irish Press Group, he said a quarter of a century ago people would have thought you mad had you forecast its newspaper titles would be gone within 10 years. Similarly, people would have laughed had you said at the same time that the Catholic church with its crowded pews would see hundreds in attendance fall to dozens.

“National institutions don’t necessarily survive as national institutions,” he continued, “particularly in volatile times. The only national institution – and perhaps it’s an analogy for Fianna Fáil – apart from

RTÉ perhaps to successfully chart the demographics of modern Ireland and the arrival of modern broadcast media is the GAA. It still manages to be organised, parish-based and yet glamorous, sophisticated and dramatic in television terms.”

The GAA’s evolution from its beginnings as part of the pan-nationalist revival of the late 19th century has seen it survive and thrive in a manner not achieved to anything like the same extent by its original cultural associates in the Irish language movement and the national theatre, the Abbey. That ability to adapt to changing circumstances isn’t entirely serendipitous and, at present, the battle to remain relevant is being waged as the association pursues the precepts of the GAA’s Strategic Vision and Action Plan 2009-2015.

Dublin entered the arena – belatedly – on Monday with the county’s strategic plan for 2011-17, an extensive trawl through the issues facing the capital and a timetable for the delivery of proposed solutions. That, however, is the easy part and it will be the meeting of deadlines for the resolution of problems and the hitting of development targets, which will determine the success of the plan.

Privately, Croke Park officials accept meeting those targets nationally has been an uneven process. As usual, the most efficiently performing province is Ulster. That’s for a couple of reasons. Firstly, there has been a culture of county development plans and delivery – with specialist consultants volunteering expertise to help counties – even before the national strategy was launched.

Secondly, the abundance of state development grants that the Ulster Council has availed of down the years has also entailed the guaranteeing of administrative structures before funding is released. As a result, Ulster units have better established levels of governance and a greater familiarity with the demands of strategic planning. Ulster is doing excellent work in reaching across the community barriers – as was illustrated at last weekend’s Central Council meeting in a presentation by the Ulster Council – but at its core it has a loyal and committed base.

From a Dublin perspective, the world is of course very different. There may be the advantage of a massive population, but it has never been a wholly attentive audience and needs constant cultivation in the face of major competition from other sports and apathy.

To that extent Unleashing the Blue Wave – A Strategy for Dublin GAA 2011-2017ticks all the right boxes – reviewing the club demographics in a county where some clubs have the catchment of counties, maximising participation outside of the traditional competitive structures, prioritising the recruitment of volunteers, devising workable structures to accommodate the growing incidence of dual players, developing a medium-capacity stadium, a startlingly ambitious schedule of All-Ireland title targets and high-register commercial aspirations.

There are also ideas that have already been promoted in recent years by Dublin CEO John Costello in his reports to annual conventions – the idea of the county being accorded provincial status for funding purposes and with that a place on the GAA’s management committee and availing of the Nama land bank to acquire sites for development.

All proposals are linked to implementation timetables and it is in the realising of these targets that the whole plan will ultimately be judged. But Dublin has, in the painstaking elevation of its status in the hurling world, demonstrated an ability to meet development targets – the hurling blueprint from 10 years ago – over a sustained period.

The most awkward question that arises centres not on failure, but on success. What if Dublin are successful in their targets? Already, there have been rumblings that the county is beginning to exploit its resources to a far more telling extent than in previous years but such concerns are probably premature.

Although reaching four All-Ireland finals in September was an impressive vindication of all the under-age work done in games development, it has to be remembered Dublin managed to win just one. This year Galway won three elite All-Ireland titles and yet there’s no growing apprehension that the county is about to take over the world.

But if Dublin start hitting targets like an All-Ireland football title every three years and a hurling equivalent every five years plus assorted under-age achievements, how will counties view the flow of enhanced funds into the capital and the development of Dublin GAA into the “biggest brand in the country”?

Dublin can justifiably point to the fact Kerry have won that many football All-Irelands since their first success over 100 years ago whereas Kilkenny, Cork and Tipperary have all exceeded that strike rate in hurling since the foundation of the GAA, but the sight of the country’s most populous county taking a large slice of financial resources and turning it into silverware would raise hackles.

Even the interpretation of Dublin as an individual brand ignores the national context – something the GAA addressed in the Amateur Status report of 1997, which suggested national sponsorship deals to help weaker counties avail of revenues they couldn’t access on their own. Unsurprisingly Dublin and Cork weren’t too keen on that.

This year has been a good one for Dublin GAA in the marketing arena. The Spring Series under lights at Croke Park gave the footballers an average league attendance of 30,000. That will be repeated next season with the added advantage of the Sam Maguire in the city. But so much depends on that status. Dublin will need the type of success enjoyed over the past two years to sustain big crowds for league fixtures and although Kerry have shown the way in that respect Dublin’s actual attainment for most of GAA history is closer to one All-Ireland every 10 years.

So it’s pointless getting too worked up about the problems of success before they arise. In the meantime the ambition and confidence of the strategic plan are to be applauded because if the GAA can make further significant inroads into the country’s biggest urban environment it’s good news for