Regulation of Drones Bill 2025: Second Stage Dail Éireann — 2026-01-29 ============================================================ Roderic O'Gorman (GP), Dublin West The Minister of State has been thrown into the deep end here on drones but I thank him for his contribution. I appreciate the Minister, Deputy O'Brien, being here earlier on and making his own contribution, and hearing mine and those of some of the Deputies. I am grateful to Deputies, from Dublin West and other areas, for addressing this matter. I am not happy with the Minister, Deputy O'Brien's response and I will outline my concerns about it. The first of these is, just like with the framework policy on drones, the lack of timelines, bar one. It is still not clear to me, when I read Deputy O'Brien's speech, when any of this is going to happen. Delivery drones started at scale in March-April 2024. We are 18 months down the line and I still do not see when we will see substantive measures taken. There is one date in the speech provided, that is, in February 2026 the national UAS policy framework monitoring group will meet for the first time. The framework policy was published in August of last year and, six months later, the group overseeing the national framework policy is going to have its first meeting. There is no sense of urgency. There is no sense of even momentum with a six-month delay between when a national framework is created and work starts. The Minister of State, Deputy Byrne, describes it as "a living document" in his speech. It does not strike me there is much life in it right now. People need to get a move on. The Minister's speech is clear about what he and his Department is not going to do, but I am unclear about what is going to happen. The Minister's speech speaks about the Government being unable to put this into the planning legislation even though there is a planning Bill coming through the House soon that at least part of my proposal could be slotted into. We are told that it might delay the delivery of housing and infrastructure. The written speech says that; in fairness, the Minister took that back. However, it is very frustrating for it to say there is the appropriate legislative vehicle to deal with the planning issue here coming through the House and the Department has taken the call not to put that in it. On the issue of noise pollution, there is a long session here about why we should not be going to the District Court. I agree that the District Court is not the right place to be dealing with any noise pollution issue but that is the law as it is right now. I see no reason drone noise cannot be treated in the same way as any other sort of nuisance noise. As for the Minister's line, "We do have a distance to go in respect of fully addressing drone noise before a role for the courts can be considered", "a distance to go" has to be, for me, the euphemism of the day. In terms of what is happening and has happened in the last six months since the framework strategy was published, one such action is the Irish Aviation Authority supporting local authorities and planners to acquire the necessary aviation knowledge about UAS technology, regulation and oversight. The IAA, has already begun to provide this support. Therefore, the IAA is providing some advice to local authorities. That is great, but setting the bar low. It is giving a little bit of advice. I would not be boasting about that. On noise, the focus here is on mitigation. The focus seems to be on us making the devices or drones quieter. New propellers have been put on some of the drones in my area. That is great, but that is not about empowering people who have real concerns and are experiencing noise pollution in their areas with a route or mechanism to address this. Deputy Donnelly and others spoke about the issue of scaling. Right now, there is one company using delivery drones in one part of the city but, in my view, the trend or direction of travel here is that other companies, maybe not food delivery, maybe for entirely different reasons and maybe for valid reasons, will start to look at and invest in drone technology and the State is stepping back and saying it will let this happen and see what happens. I know no other area of new technology where we are so blasé about rolling back the State and letting things happen. I say this because action 16 of the national policy framework states, "The Irish Aviation Authority will promote processes that allow for the allocation of airspace for experimental and developing UAS operations to be established." This idea of the experiment, this idea of suck it and see, is built into the Government's national policy and I do not know of other areas where new technology is let loose like that. What has happened in Dublin 15 is not something that occurred in a regulatory vacuum. The Government has chosen regulatory vacuum. The Government has chosen to allow experimentation take place. The Minister, Deputy O'Brien, spoke about us having 12 months for the timed amendment and how the Opposition can hold the Government's feet to the fire. The Minister can bet that I will be doing that because I do not see anything in the response from him that gives me clarity about how we are to address the fundamental issue here. The fundamental issue here is we have not had a proper debate about how much of what happens on the roads should happen in the sky. The Minister of State made a point about people ordering and getting coffee. I agree that happens, but let us have a discussion about to the extent to which we want that as a society. Do we want to give a delivery drone dropping a coffee cup the same level of priority in our air as a delivery drone delivering medicine or delivering something to an elderly person, or doing a survey for a piece of infrastructure? That is a conversation, a debate and a discussion we need to have. We need to make decisions on that, and they are not being made at the moment. There is not even a clear pathway in the framework policy about how that big-picture discussion takes place. There are a lot of little bits; for example, the IAA will advise local authorities, which is fantastic. However, that big question of what we want in our skies, and how much of it we want in our skies, is being entirely avoided here. That is a real problem. We will be back here because there will be drones in other communities, and that divided opinion - I recognise it is a divided opinion - will be taking place in other communities around Dublin and around the country. I had a few really poor-quality drone puns that I was going to throw into the speech, but I will not subject the House to that at this stage. I appreciate the Deputies’ contributions. This is a matter we will be coming back to. It is serious. It is just touching one community now, but it will become a bigger issue. I recommend that the Government takes a more proactive approach to how it addresses this. --- 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