The biggest growth in apartment building in the past five years hasn't been in some throbbing metropolis but in leafy Westmeath. Figures from Homebond, the organisation that registers new building developments, shows that in 1997 two apartment schemes were built in the county and by 2001 that had risen to 174. It's still modest by comparison with Dublin which registered 2,191 developments in 2001, down from 2,737 in 2000.