{"id":511977,"date":"2026-06-22T03:21:13","date_gmt":"2026-06-22T03:21:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/511977\/"},"modified":"2026-06-22T03:21:13","modified_gmt":"2026-06-22T03:21:13","slug":"peace-and-quiet-residents-welcome-manna-drone-pause-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/511977\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Peace and quiet\u2019: Residents welcome Manna drone \u2018pause\u2019 \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Some residents of Dublin 15 have welcomed news of drone delivery operator Manna\u2019s \u201cstrategic pause\u201d<\/a> on its Irish operations, with noise complaints and concerns around privacy central to local discontent around the service. <\/p>\n

\u201cThey fly right over our back garden,\u201d says Paul Bohan, who lives with his wife Sharon in Coolmine. Last Saturday, the couple\u2019s son visited from Belfast alongside his young daughter. Plans to stage a barbecue in said garden had to be abandoned.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey were just back and forward,\u201d Sharon says of the drones<\/a>. \u201cYou were waiting for them to come back again. It\u2019s absolutely disgraceful that they were let do it. It\u2019s like a tractor going over your head \u2026 Since they\u2019re gone, I just feel peace.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhere we live, it seemed to be nonstop over our house,\u201d Paul adds. \u201cIt\u2019s very invasive, I felt.\u201d <\/p>\n

\"MannaManna manufactures drones in Ireland, but is planning further expansion in the United States. <\/p>\n

In a statement announcing its strategic pause on Friday, Manna cited \u201cthe absence of a clear national policy framework\u201d and said the sector\u2019s reliance on local planning processes \u201ccreated uncertainty around the infrastructure required to support drone delivery at scale\u201d. <\/p>\n

The company<\/a>, founded by Irish tech entrepreneur Bobby Healy, says that over the past seven years, it has completed more than 300,000 deliveries in Ireland, with more than 90,000 of them in Dublin 15 alone. <\/p>\n

Eddie Matthews, who lives in Summerfield Green, Blanchardstown, says he took very little notice of the drones when they started operating in the area. \u201cIt got more incessant because the flight path goes over the back of my house and the back of the house in front of me,\u201d he says. <\/p>\n

Vulnerable people in the area, Matthews says, can be the worst affected by the drones<\/a>, with the noise and unpredictability of their intrusions causing anxiety. He is pleased but \u201cnot ecstatic\u201d about the news of the company pausing its operations.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not anti-progress. And I worked in the health service for 40 years, so I can see the benefits which these could have in a non-commercial sense, but I\u2019m happy from a point of view of comfort and peace and quiet that they\u2019re not operating,\u201d Matthews says. <\/p>\n

Jamie Ivory and Chloe Lawlor sleep in a converted attic loft in Blanchardstown, where Ivory says the \u201cwhirring of the blade is extremely loud\u201d. It sets dogs off in the neighbourhood as well, Lawlor adds. Despite these misgivings, Ivory concedes that the drones seem \u201cfairly popular\u201d. <\/p>\n

\u201cJudging by the amount of drones that are going by daily<\/a>, I\u2019d say a lot of people liked it … But on the other hand, a lot of people disliked it,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\"ThenThen t\u00e1naiste Leo Varadkar at the launch of Manna drone delivery\u2019s Balbriggan operation, with chief executive Bobby Healy, in 2022.
\nPhotograph: Dara Mac D\u00f3naill <\/p>\n

Over the past 18 months, a group of local residents in the area have been campaigning under the name Drone Action D15. Michael Dooley, who lives in Blanchardstown, is a member of the group and says that a \u201chuge amount of people\u201d are against drones being operated in his community. <\/p>\n

\u201cThey fly over my house all the time,\u201d Dooley says. \u201cThe people who are unfortunate to live near any of the drone bases get a huge amount of drone flights going over their houses. A drone that flies at 65m is very tonal. The characteristics are very clear.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019ll hear them coming, you\u2019ll hear them passing over and you\u2019ll hear them going away. It\u2019s a very, very noticeable noise. When they hover to deliver \u2026 15m above the ground, you couldn\u2019t speak; it\u2019s that loud.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dooley says that when Manna <\/a>began operating in Dublin 15, they did not consult enough with local communities <\/a>to assess any concerns. The company disputes this, arguing it offered to attend and engage with the group at a meeting in the office of Ruth Coppinger TD, who has supported Drone Action D15 and described Manna\u2019s pause on operations as a \u201cvictory for communities over big tech\u201d. <\/p>\n

A Manna spokesperson <\/a>says the company \u201cspoke at Fingal County Council meetings, briefed elected representatives, held public meetings at our base, Castleknock Tennis Club and Blanchardstown Centre, and made ourselves available to answer questions\u201d. <\/p>\n

Dooley says that Manna\u2019s operations had \u201ceffectively [taken] control of the skies in Dublin 15\u201d, so much so that other commercial drone operators have found it more difficult to work in the area. One of those is Fergal McCarthy, the founder of aerial services provider Drone Services Ireland. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe impact that we would have in Blanchardstown would generally be construction sites and roof inspections and that type of work,\u201d McCarthy says.<\/p>\n

Before Manna set up in the area, according to McCarthy, an \u201camber zone\u201d existed for drone operators, meaning they could fly up to 30m above ground level. Manna\u2019s arrival meant commercial and hobbyist drone operators alike would have to apply to Airnav Ireland, an air traffic control agency, for flight permission, where previously none was needed, complicating small-scale use of the technology. <\/p>\n

Dooley says Drone Action D15 \u201cwere never, and are not, against the use of drones for building surveying or professional drone users. It\u2019s the normalisation of putting traffic into the air above your back garden, rather than being delivered to your front door,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

In a statement, Manna said <\/a>its focus \u201cis currently on supporting its staff, customers and the more than 120 Irish businesses that are partnered with the service, while continuing to invest in its international expansion\u201d.<\/p>\n

The company said that public support for its service is \u201csignificant\u201d, with \u201chundreds of customers\u201d contacting local representatives in support of drone delivery in September 2025, followed by \u201cmore than 1,100 Dublin 15 residents doing so again in November … More than 6,000 people also signed a petition supporting the expansion of drone delivery in Dublin.\u201d <\/p>\n

The statement continued: \u201cThe service <\/a>is particularly popular with working parents, young families, people working from home and those with mobility challenges … As with any frontier technology, there are genuine questions and concerns that deserve open debate and Manna consistently sought to engage with residents who held those concerns.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Some residents of Dublin 15 have welcomed news of drone delivery operator Manna\u2019s \u201cstrategic pause\u201d on its Irish…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":112473,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[72,168745,616,61,60],"class_list":["post-511977","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-drone-delivery","tag-dublin-15","tag-ie","tag-ireland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/511977","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=511977"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/511977\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/112473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=511977"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=511977"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=511977"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}