What’s happened with Manna’s plan to expand its drone delivery service across Dublin?

Drone delivery company Manna’s planned aerial delivery hub in Tallaght is the latest to face a setback, with the planning application withdrawn a year after it was first filed, and a few days before a final decision was due.

Partas CLG – a social enterprise that runs the Tallaght Enterprise Centre and filed the planning application as the landowner – pulled the application on 18 December, show planning documents. 

Partas hasn’t responded to queries as to why. But a spokesperson for Manna said on Tuesday that it’s still proceeding with the hub with Partas. “The previous application was withdrawn due to an administrative issue and we will be reapplying.”

The tally of Manna’s active drone delivery sites across Dublin at last year’s end stands in contrast to the company’s past announcements about plans to expand its service in Ireland.

In early 2025, Manna CEO Bobby Healy said in a LinkedIn post “This is the Manna Air Delivery rollout plan for 2025”, with a map that appears to show 14 bases around Dublin. 

But the only site currently enjoying planning permission is at the Blanchardstown Shopping Centre. That has a temporary three-year permission that is up for renewal later this year.

The company has faced pushback in Dublin 15 from some local councillors and residents concerned, mostly, about the disruption and stress of noise from deliveries overhead, day in and day out.

However, a spokesperson for Manna said on Tuesday that the company had been welcomed in Dublin in real terms. “We’re nearing 60,000 deliveries in Dublin 15 alone.”

“Both Manna and public representatives have heard from a broad cross-section of the public in support of the service in recent months in Blanchardstown and Dublin 15 and we plan to support them,” he said.

“Looking to 2026, our focus is on continuing to improve our Irish-built drones from a technology perspective and expanding into new locations in Dublin and beyond,” said the Manna spokesperson.

In Tallaght and beyond

Partas first applied for permission for the Tallaght hub on 23 December 2024 – but the case dragged on.

Two public submissions – one from a local resident, Alison Kenealy, and one from Brian Whyte at Drone Services Ireland – raised reservations.

Council planners asked for six bits of additional information in February. 

Among other things, they sought a noise impact assessment, and an assessment of the potential safety and operational impacts of the proposed drone service given activities at Casement Aerodrome, a military airfield about 6km west of the proposed drone base.

They also asked for written confirmation from the Irish Aviation Authority (IAA) that the proposed development would not interfere with or pose risks to any existing or future aviation activities  – and pointed in particular to the operation of Weston Airfield and the emergency helicopter service to Tallaght Hospital.

In a submission on 26 November, Partas responded to the request for information about the aerodrome impact. 

Manna was the end-user of the site, the document said, and they were engaged in discussion with the Department of Defence on a memorandum around that, and wouldn’t use the site until that is in place. 

Also, Manna always works through the correct process with the IAA before it starts operations from a site, it says.

On 8 December, the Department of Defence wrote to the council with a submission. 

“The developer should provide an aviation impact assessment to assess all potential impacts by Unmanned Aircraft System on Irish Air Corps flight operations from Casement Aerodrome,” it said.  

“The report should also describe the total area to be served and concept of operations for delivery of Unmanned Aircraft System,” the submission said.

On 18 December, Partas withdrew the application. 

“We are extremely relieved,” says John Kenealy, who lives in the nearby Bancroft housing estate and whose wife had made a submission to the planning application opposing it.

But still, it seems to him to be one of those suggestions that is going to bubble away, he says, and the picture is bigger than just Tallaght. 

Regulators in Europe haven’t really decided a stance yet on drone deliveries, he says. 

A stalled roll-out?

In 2024, Manna set up a drone delivery base next to the Clonsilla Inn, but in June of that year Fingal County Council ordered it removed.

Then, on 30 October of this year, Fingal County Council refused to grant retroactive (“retention”) permission for a drone delivery base at Junction 6 from which Manna had been operating.

Council planners said that it didn’t fit with the high-tech zoning for the land, which was meant for “high end, high-quality, value-added businesses and corporate headquarters”. 

The delivery base was incompatible with existing land uses, and has a “non-employment intensive nature”, which “cumulatively results in the unsustainable and uneconomical use of the subject lands”. The application didn’t give enough detail about noise pollution either, it said.

Meanwhile, Manna has two planning applications pending elsewhere in Dublin’s suburbs. 

One for a site on Main Street in Dundrum – for which it filed for planning permission on 11 June 2025. Planners sought more info on 1 August 2025. They asked for a really detailed noise assessment, and assessments of the impact on wildlife.

And another for a site in Coolmine Industrial Estate in Fingal, where it filed for retention permission on 30 September 2025, and planners asked for more info in November 2025. 

In this case, they have also asked for a noise impact assessment, and a transport statement setting out what kind of vehicles and traffic will be generated in serving the aerial hub on the ground.

For Manna’s existing delivery hub at Blanchardstown Shopping Centre, the landowner applied for a temporary three-year permission in May 2023 – which was approved in August 2023.

Manna didn’t address queries as to if and when it plans to work with the landowner, to apply for a renewal of that planning permission this year. 

It also hasn’t replied to queries about why it hadn’t yet rolled out a delivery hub on Slaney Road in Glasnevin Industrial Estate, as a spokesperson had spoken about early last year.

However, in appearances at a meeting of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Transport last July, and on an episode of the Business Plus Talks podcast put out on 2 January, Healy talked a bit about Manna’s expansion plans.

“Most of our plans are international, so our growth primarily will be in the Nordics,” he said at the committee in July. “We have an operation in Finland and an operation in Texas.” 

On the podcast, Healy said the company is active in three locations: Dublin, Texas and Helsinki. “We’re going to ramp up a lot in the United States, definitely Texas and probably one or two other states.”

“Undecided around Europe and Ireland,” he said. “Ireland is a small market in theory, not an important market in theory, but it’s important to me personally, wearing my green jersey.”

In the episode, the interviewer also asked Healy what the hardest problem was for Manna to solve.

“The hard part is staying alive and not running out of cash, while you’re waiting on regulators to catch up with you. Because we are so far ahead of regulations,” said Healy.

They keep having to go to the European regulator to tell them what they need, he said. 

He understands that regulators have to be disciplined though, Healy said, and that their remit is to protect people.