Regulation of Drones Bill 2025: Second Stage Dail Éireann — 2026-01-29 ============================================================ Ruth Coppinger (PBP), Dublin West We have been the experimental lab in Dublin 15 for this technology. I thank the TDs from outside Dublin West and I will be absolutely frank. It was only when it was spoken about that this technology would be going into other areas that immediately people kicked up about it. We have been suffering this for a year and a half. It was introduced with no opposition. It was welcomed in by the Minister, Deputy Chambers, who is a TD for the area. Some people raised it at local council level, trying to get media attention on it. They put it on the council agenda. Deputy Gannon raised it in here as a Topical Issue one day and I raised it. Then Dundrum happened and 200 people showed up to a meeting there. Fair play to Dundrum; the people said to hang on a second and that they were not having it. The company had to have some level of consultation there. This was a turning point last summer. I will give my position on where we should go with this. The Bill is quite minimal. I support the provisions in it but it is far from dealing with the issue. We have had no debate on the impact of this very intrusive technology, which is completely and utterly wrong. It was allowed to happen by Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael in particular. There was no consent sought from the communities that had to endure it. A couple of comments have been made about the noise. It has been said that it is like the death of peace and quiet but this is not the case for everyone. I do not hear the noise as much as other residents would but it is not about taking a poll to see what the temperature is and going with that. If it impacts on a minority of people, that is enough and it should not be allowed to do this. There is one company, Manna, that has upped the ante and taken on Deliveroo. What about when other companies, such as Amazon or Google, start to use this? We will have an M50 in the sky. The only other country where this has happened and there has been a community response is Australia. The community in Bonython protested and saw off the drones. To make it clear, because it is a bit jaded to say some TDs do not like technology and we are Luddites, we do not just welcome technology for the sake of technology. It is about how technology impacts on people. A number of people in academia are very opposed to this. There was a public meeting that was attended by other TDs here. Everyone knows how hard it is to get people to a meeting and there were 250 people in the Crowne Plaza hotel, on a cold enough night, who were very concerned about the impact this was having. We all agree that drones can be used amazingly for medical issues, topography, geography and emergency situations such as delivering defibrillators. This is what they should primarily be used for. I am in favour of regulation where we outline the uses of drones. I do not think they should be used for commercial or fast-food delivery in highly built-up residential areas. I do not see that as being essential, not compared to the scale of the impact it is having on people. It is not about just opposing technology. The effect of persistent noise on people is very damaging to their health. We know this from all the studies. Dr. Ciara Bracken-Roche from Maynooth University spoke at the meeting. I also had a very good meeting with Professor Julia Powles, who is a professor of law and technology in Australia. She has written a lot about this and the impact that Google drones had there. There is a lot of questioning of this technology. Primarily, it is communities getting organised for themselves that has made the difference. I do not have time to go into it but Manna has been operating disgracefully in Dublin West. It has three bases and two of them did not have any planning permission. The rules do not seem to apply. In fact, it is quoted in the newspapers as saying the planning regulations had not caught up with it. The rules do not apply to it. Due to community opposition, this has been pushed back on two of the sites and the other will come up for renewal shortly. I imagine there will be opposition to it. The reason is that we all agree it is great having technology, but not when it means constant noise. There is a privacy issue also and this has been proved. A French company came over and did excellent work whereby it got one and showed how it worked. A photograph is taken of the site where the package will be dropped - the package is a burger or, mainly, a coffee - but the drone is taking pictures of other back gardens as well. This was shown in the work. Someone out in their back garden should not have a company with a drone taking a photograph of them. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-01-29/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:34+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-01-29