Callers to the radio programme recounted a litany of complaints, including stories of waking up each morning to the sound of a crying child, or a radio playing in a neighbour's apartment. One couple offered a graphic description of how items of furniture vibrate in their living room when the washing machine in the apartment overhead is switched on.

Paper thin walls and poor sound insulation are, I'm convinced, almost a standard feature of many of the apartment blocks now being constructed with such alacrity in boomtime Ireland. Anyone buying an apartment is immediately at a disadvantage in this regard, because deficiencies in construction are so hard to detect, even for the most assiduous snaglist compiler. Unless you're in a position to carry out a DIY acoustics test - perhaps by playing a ghettoblaster in adjoining units - there isn't any way you can initially ascertain if insulation levels are adequate.

I was well settled into my apartment before I became aware that I had a problem in this regard. For 12 months the unit next to mine was unoccupied.

When the owner rented the premises, I realised immediately that noise was a big issue.

Evidence of the dividing wall's inadequacy as a sound barrier was so spectacular, friends to whom I recounted various incidents were initially inclined to accuse me of exaggerating the problem.

But I had no desire to be serenaded daily by the admittedly mellifluous tones of my bearded neighbour. Nor were the peculiarities of his diet, particularly his penchant for Chinese food, conveyed regularly by mobile phone to the local takeaway - and inadvertently to me - the kind of intimate personal information to which I wanted to be privy.

Fortunately for me, my neighbours are an understanding bunch, and we nowadays retain a reasonable degree of individual privacy by all of us maintaining noise levels at a mutually acceptable level.

The builders though, were far less accommodating, refusing, for at least 18 months, to accept that there even was a problem.

I assumed that I could invoke the Homebond 10year guarantee against major structural faults. Not so. "Problems with a separating wall aren't regarded as a structural issue, " a spokesperson informed me.

Eventually, after innumerable threats to institute legal proceedings, the builders agreed to take some limited remedial action. The three inchthick sheets of cork-backed plasterboard they screwed to the bedroom wall and then replastered have had some limited effect in reducing noise levels.

By way of contrast, an Irish developer working in Jersey recently showed me around a new apartment complex he has constructed there. "This separating wall is 15 inches thick, " he said. "There are several layers of insulation and an air pocket to further thwart sound transmission. An acoustics engineer checks every new unit and if your building doesn't measure up it will be condemned."

He shook his head in shocked surprise at my evidence of inadequate insulation in Irish dwellings. "What you're talking about there, are Third World building standards."