City Living: You can - but will it stop builders who make too much noise? Edel Morgan finds out

Recently I wrote how many city dwellers are being forced to live with the relentless din of construction as high density apartment and townhouse schemes are being thrown up around them. During daylight hours people are expected to endure any amount of hammering, banging and drilling. The only respite is outside normal construction hours - usually between 8am and 7pm on weekdays and 8am to 1 pm on Saturdays . Builders who infringe planning conditions and operate outside agreed times are open to prosecution by the local authorities. Or so the theory goes.

Ronan Gallagher, who lives in an apartment scheme in Inchicore, Dublin 8, says he and several neighbours "spent much of 2004" reporting the builder of a nearby apartment scheme to the City Council's planning department for infringements of the building regulations, "from pouring concrete at 6am to working pneumatic drills from Saturday long after 1pm".

Dublin City Council received 685 noise related complaints last year of which 192 related to the construction industry. The council's standard reply is that when a complaint is made, it will approach the builder and if they are breaching conditions of planning permission , will ask them to desist "and most heed the initial warning".

However, in Gallagher's experience it has not been so straightforward. "We prepared several dossiers for the council, yet almost one year later, we've only had one phone call saying it hadn't been forgotten. This service is scandalous. The planning officer for our area said overtime wasn't sanctioned so he could come and verify our claims.

"The sense of powerlessness against the alleged right of the construction industry is very acute. You mentioned dirt and dust. Our walls are painted white, and even allowing for gradual wear and tear, it's amazing how dirty they've become. Who compensates us for the cleaning and repainting ?"

A letter from Gallagher to Dublin City Council's planning information officer dated September 9th 2004, lists 12 alleged breaches by Citywise Construction during the building of St James's Place between May 1 and September 2nd, 2004.

City Living contacted Dublin City Council's planning enforcement manager Rory O'Byrne who says the council did not take the matter further because St James' Place was almost complete by September 2004 and the builders would have been off-site by the time any action was taken, making it difficult to prove and prosecute.

"The procedure is we issue a warning letter within six weeks, followed by an inspection fairly quickly, more quickly these days than in the past. People don't understand the onus of proof, we don't like to go to court unless we are certain of winning. There has to be an amalgamation of proof. The enforcement officer has to have witnessed the breaches and residents have to keep a log.

"Some residents can find it difficult, they are open to being cross examined if it goes to court which can be upsetting. It's not Perry Mason but a major developer will have a senior council and solicitor and there may be an exhaustive and sharp cross examination."

Getting the enforcement officer to the site to witness the breach is not always easy. "These breaches occur outside normal working hours on an overtime basis and that has to be controlled. There is no 24-hour cover. There is no one waiting or on call.It's not Hawaii Five O." When City Living asked him if this is down to a lack of resources he replied " I would say we have sufficient resources to enforce the planning act."

According to Ronan Gallagher, the planning officer told him he wasn't sanctioned by his superiors to investigate his complaints. "How can you prove guidelines are being breached if they don't investigate outside the stipulated hours?" he asks.

How seriously the local authority takes a breach of the conditions can depend on the skill with which the local authority imposes them and how stringently it enforces them. Town planner Francis Neary says that local authorities can be slow to enforce breaches of builders' working hours because it is not always high on their priority list.

"If there was a complaint about an extra storey on a building, they would react more quickly. While stipulating the hours within which a builder can operate is often a standard condition, it is often not one that will be immediately enforced if there are breaches."

If your local authority is slow to respond to a noise problem you can make your own complaint at the District Court under Section 108 of the Environmental Protection Agency Act 1992. Taking on the might of the construction industry in court can be intimidating - and sometimes costly - for many individuals.

Of course there are plenty of builders out there who abide by the planning conditions of a development. To do otherwise comes down to not just a breach of planning conditions but a breach of common decency.