Now in their 10th year, the RIAI's Regional Awards scheme has cause to celebrate - both in terms of quantity and quality. And even though much of what is being built today in the phosphorescent phase of our economic growth is unadulterated rubbish, good architecture still manages to shine through.

The institute's president, Eoin O' Cofaigh, says architectural design standards are rising, at least partly because of "better-informed, more articulate and, above all, more quality-driven clients". There is also "a level of public discourse on architecture in both the printed and electronic media which would have been unthinkable a decade ago".

This year, from the 156 projects submitted, a jury chaired by David O'Connor, the Fingal County Architect, selected 24 for awards and a further 42 for inclusion in the Roadstone-sponsored exhibition which will spend the next several months travelling the country. It opened at the Cork Vision Centre last Monday. The catalogue illustrates all of the award-winners, but unfortunately does not include the citations, which are to be published separately in the first issue of the RIAI's Irish Architectural Review, due to be published shortly by Gandon Editions. It is to become an annual publication, in recognition of the level of architectural activity here.

Some of the citations are incredibly trite, even including gratuitous exclamation marks. Of Scott Tallon Walker's East Point office park near Fairview, one juror wrote that it was "surely an example of how architects can do it better!". Nonetheless, the late Dermot Pierce, who developed it, would have been chuffed that it won an award.

Similarly, the new Dental Hospital, in Lincoln Place, designed by Ahrends Burton Koralek, is said to be "a pleasing place to visit in spite of being full of dentists!". Other comments are so illiterate and spattered with misspellings that the Review must have been a nightmare to edit; perhaps it proves the adage that architects can't write.

Take the Gresham Hotel's new "canopy" (sic), by Arthur Gibney and Partners, which - according to the citation - shows "how effective fully thought-out design (including dealing with the rainwater discharge!) can at once make a statement but also sit quietly in its historical context". Well, yes, we think we've got the drift.

One of the most significant awards went to the Belfast-based Consarc Design Group for its "very understated re-ordering" of the Parliament Buildings at Stormont, following a disastrous fire in January, 1995. All improvements had been introduced in such a way as to harmonise with the original design as a result of the architects' thorough research.

Other major public projects have also won awards, including the refurbishment of Heuston Station (CIE Architects/Brian O'Halloran Associates), where the design team had managed to unravel "a Gordian knot of great complexity", according to the jury, while respecting the original architecture of the building, which dates from 1844.

The "taut and elegant minimalism" of the Gate Multiplex in Cork won another award for Derek Tynan Architects, while South Dublin County Council's architects' department impressed the jury for its massing, fenestration and "fine detailing" of its new headquaters. The fact that its interior is marred by plasticised wood veneer was not a drawback. Inevitably, O'Donnell and Tuomey scooped awards for the Ranelagh Multi-Denominational School - described by the jury as a landmark building with a scale and rhythm appropriate to its setting - and for the "stark forms" of their extraordinary concrete house in Navan, "a Japanese courtyard house content to live in an Irish backyard".

Other housing projects featured in this year's awards include a classical-inspired scheme for Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council at Wyattville Road, Ballybrack, designed by Peter Cully for the National Building Agency. It succeeded in giving residents a sense of place regrettably absent in most housing estates, the jury said.

Award-winning individual houses in rural settings include a somewhat contrived tripartite house near Durrus, Co Cork, by Tom Hegarty/O'Riordan Staehli Architects. As the jury noted, this attempted to strike a balance between modern and West Cork vernacular and seemed to offer a model for the polyglot "New Age" population of the area.

THAT search for a new model also seems to have been a pre-occupation for Richard Murphy Architects in the design of another one-off house on a sensitive site at Killeenaran, Co Galway. With its re-working of the dry stone wall for the base and an upper floor in timber under an overhanging roof, it is almost Swiss rather than Irish in character.

Two major conversions also feature in the awards - a "stylish and assured" transformation, by Michael Shanahan and Associates, of an old BIM ice house into a new Regional Fisheries Centre in Cork, and an equally stylish and inventive remodelling of the former Kodak building in Rathmines by Paul Keogh Architects for an advertising agency.

Grafton Architects, whose work never ceases to impress, scooped no less than three of this year's awards - for the "great finesse" of its Screening Room for Clarence Pictures, in Fenian Street; a beautiful mews house in a backland location on Little Strand Street and an evocative, timber-framed extension to another mews on Clyde Lane.

Other award-winners include Michael Healy and Associates for its strikingly modern offices, warehouse and factory for Tellabs Ltd in Galway, and Arthur Gibney and Partners for the Temple Bar Properties-commissioned restoration of No 25 Eustace Street to serve as offices and residential accommodation for the Irish Landmark Trust. Any contest for the most unusual projects in the 1999 Regional Awards would be a dead-heat between Niall McLaughlin's "predatory" Shack in Northamptonshire, which won a Sunday Times award last year, and the Office of Public Works' extraordinarily colourful mausoleum to encase the former Sacred Heart Oratory, in Dun Laoghaire.

Lindsay Johnson, an Irish-born architect working in Australia, always seems to have something new and interesting to say and this year he has won an award for a series of "eco-lodges" in Hunter Valley, New South Wales. Another Overseas award went to Martin Henchion for the Haus Am Zoo, an office and residential refurbishment in Leipzig.

Overall, this year's jury has shown more discrimination than some of its predecessors, perhaps because there is so much architectural endeavour to choose from. But few could disagree with Shane O'Toole's suggestion that a leading architectural critic from overseas should be invited to take part in the selection process.

Such a dispassionate, outside view - already an important component of the Architectural Association of Ireland's awards scheme - might tell us more about the current state of architecture in Ireland.