Glasnevin-area residents eye up “quiet area” status to stymie planned drone delivery service

As the company Manna prepares to launch its drone delivery service from an industrial park in Glasnevin, there have been calls for the council or the government to step in.

Please declare the area a “drone-free zone” until there’s a national policy on how and where and when drones can be used, a residents' association asked the Minister for Transport in an email Friday. 

At a 5 June meeting, staff at the Irish Aviation Authority (IAA) had said “that they only have powers to look at the mechanical safety of commercial drones” at the moment, wrote Ruth Carty, secretary of the Griffith Avenue and District Residents Association. 

Other aspects of drone operations, though, are not regulated by anyone yet, Carty wrote in her Friday email. 

Then, on Tuesday, the council’s Central Area Committee backed a motion from Fine Gael Councillor Gayle Ralph calling on the council to “act under its existing powers, confirmed by the Irish Aviation Authority (IAA) to designate Cabra Glasnevin Ward as a Quiet Area, thereby ensuring its formal recognition as a No-Fly Zone for drones.”

In response to queries on whether Minister for Transport Darragh O’Brien, a Fianna Fáil TD, plans to declare Glasnevin and the surrounding area a drone-free zone, a Department of Transport spokesperson did not reply directly. 

The programme for government promised “a policy framework to guide high-level strategic planning and development of the drone sector in Ireland through supporting growth and innovation while ensuring safe and secure operations and addressing environmental and other concerns”.

“The framework is well advanced and is expected to be published in the near future,” the spokesperson said.

Worries about noise

Manna has said many times that it follows all required regulations. 

“We are regulated to the highest standards by the IAA under EASA,” said a Manna spokesperson, referring to the European Union Aviation Safety Agency. “We undergo regular rigorous independent safety tests.”

The current regulations do nothing to address noise or frequency of flights, though, said Social Democrats Councillor Cat O’Driscoll. These are among the key concerns of her constituents in the Glasnevin area, she said. 

When cruising at 50 metres, a Manna drone sounds at 60 decibels for a listener on the ground, said an IAA official in May last year. When lower for delivery, the sound is about 65 decibels, he said. 

Recently, the company started piloting new drones, which are between 2 and 4 decibels quieter, the Manna spokesperson said.

For comparison, the sound of washing your hands would be about 45 decibels, and the average road noise exposure in New York would be 73 decibels, the IAA official said.

O’Driscoll says there’s little the council can do about residents’ concerns about drones. 

"People expect that the council can regulate these things, so we get contacted, but the truth is, the council doesn't have any tools to regulate. So that's why we're in this rock and hard place," she said.

“The operators have this understandable confidence and arrogance that they can just do what they want, because there is no room to tell them what to do," she said.

National government

The Department of Transport spokesperson said the national government is working on a policy to regulate drones like Manna’s.

But Green Party TD Roderic O’Gorman says that’s what he was told months ago too. “So we'd have to see,” he said.

O’Driscoll, the Social Democrats councillor, is also sceptical about how soon a national policy might be rolled out. 

“They said they thought it would have been published by now. I've been hearing it's been coming for months,” she said.

The national government should take control of the issue, though, said O’Gorman, the Green Party TD. 

“There's a role for, you know, delivery drones in modern society,” he said. “But I think it's up to the state – it's up to Ireland to decide what that role is. Not just private companies.” 

John Walsh, a Labour Party councillor in Fingal, where Manna has been flying deliveries in D15 for quite some time, also said it’s time for the government to step in.

“The government has shown absolutely no interest in regulation of the drone delivery service,” Walsh said. “And part of it may be simply that they’re more interested in facilitating the company rather than safeguarding the quality of life for residents.” 

“Manna has seen a business opportunity and they’ve taken it — I completely understand that,” he said. “But the real failure here lies with the government and regulators.”

O’Gorman, the Green Party TD, said that more regulation could be good for commercial drone companies too. It could help with their image, he said.

“New technology needs a regulatory framework around it, because if that doesn't happen, you end up with – you end up really annoying people, and you end up actually damaging what could be a very kind of positive brand,” said O’Gorman. 

“This is such a huge leap forward. Like, literally at scale. Things that previously were delivered in cars going along our roads are now flying over our homes,” he said.

Working with existing tools

Absent national regulation, O’Driscoll, the Social Democrats councillor, and GADRA, the neighbourhood association, are looking at using existing tools focused on noise reduction to limit Manna.

“We have a nice area, quiet area, and we'd like to see it kept that way really,” said Una Caulfield of GADRA. 

The Dublin councils have a noise action plan, for 2024 to 2028. Under that plan, the councils are looking at areas they could nominate to the EPA and the Minister for Environment, Fianna Fáil’s Darragh O’Brien, to become official “quiet areas”. 

There are eight quiet areas in the Dublin area already, including St Anne’s Park, Blessington Basin, and Ranelagh Gardens, the plan says. 

“The IAA can tell drones not to go over ‘quiet areas’,” says O’Driscoll. 

In May 2024, Enda Walsh, a manager of the Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) Division of the IAA told Fingal councillors something similar.

If councillors want to restrict certain areas – for noise, environmental or privacy reasons – that should be brought into a development plan, Walsh said. “We can create UAS geographical zones to restrict those once we have the grounds for doing so.”

Indeed, the Department of Transport spokesperson says that EU law governing drones “provides for the establishment of ‘UAS geographical zones’”. 

“UAS geographical zones are portions of airspace where drone operations are facilitated, restricted, or excluded”, they said. 

The IAA can establish these “for the purpose of: minimising safety risks; protecting privacy; addressing security issues; dealing with environmental concerns”, they said.

Noise would fall under “environmental concerns”.

Funded by the Local Democracy Reporting Scheme.