Have owned both, learned in a manual car (also had no power steering so 3 point turns were great craic). I think manual is preferred here for the most part because our roads are quite small, so most people would gravitate towards something smaller. Lower powered engines typically don't do too tell with automatic or CVT setups.
Of the cars I've owned, 10 have been manual, 1 automatic. My preference would be for an automatic purely for traffic, honestly, but they're a bit thin on the ground here as I said unless you want a luxury or executive car.