The dentist in Mullingar that became Shields Dental – an independent review from founding to today.
At a glance | Mullingar Dental Centre / Shields Dental Mullingar |
Address | Buckley’s SuperValu, Austin Friars Street, Mullingar, Co. Westmeath, N91 ED2H |
Phone | 044 9340370 |
Hours | Mon–Fri 9:00am–5:00pm. Closed Saturdays. No walk-ins. |
Services | General dentistry, Invisalign, orthodontics, endodontics, oral surgery, periodontics, implants, teeth whitening, composite bonding, IV sedation, hygienist, emergency appointments, GAA mouthguards |
Accepts | Private patients, PRSI (Treatment Benefit Scheme), humm finance |
Part of | Shields Dental & Orthodontic Clinics (since 2024–2025) |
Official website | shieldsdentalclinic.ie/mullingar |
One practice. Two decades. One address that made sense.
The location was chosen deliberately. Buckley’s SuperValu on Austin Friars Street sits at the centre of Mullingar – the kind of stop people make twice a week regardless. Dr. Anne O’Donnell opened her dental practice inside the SuperValu complex in the early 2000s, and the logic was simple: if you’re already parking there, the barrier to walking in is lower.
Dr. O’Donnell had graduated from Cork Dental School. She eventually described her own philosophy in three words on the practice website: I treat people. Not teeth. The distinction sounds like marketing until you read how the practice was built – a second location on Martins Lane, parking near Christ the King Cathedral, extended hours for people who worked nine to five.
Martins Lane was quieter. Pay-on-exit parking, two minutes on foot. The cathedral is visible from the end of the street. It wasn’t as central as Austin Friars, but it meant the practice had coverage across the town.
Two addresses, one team, one brand: Mullingar Dental Centre – with a website that stayed live for over two decades.
The team grew in a way that would be unusual even for a Dublin city clinic. By the early 2020s it included eight dentists, an oral surgeon, an endodontist completing a Master’s degree at Queen Mary University London, two orthodontists, a periodontist, and a dental hygienist who was, at the time, president of the Irish Dental Hygienists Association.
That last role matters. Donna Paton, registered dental hygienist, trained at Dundee Dental Hospital, over 20 years in practice, had patients travelling from Dublin and Kildare to see her in Mullingar. That’s the reverse of how things usually work in Irish healthcare.
What a family practice looks like when it keeps adding specialists
A family dentist in a town the size of Mullingar typically offers check-ups, fillings, extractions, and maybe some whitening. Mullingar Dental Centre offered all of that. But the additions over time pointed somewhere else.
IV sedation, full intravenous sedation for patients who can’t manage treatment while conscious, is rare outside specialist dental hospitals. The practice offered it alongside The Wand, a computer-assisted local anaesthetic system that eliminates the sharp pressure of a conventional injection. For patients who avoid the dentist out of fear, those two options together change the calculation entirely.
Alpha Stim AID appeared in the final version of the site before the Shields rebrand. It’s a handheld device that delivers a low-level electrical current to reduce anxiety, cranial electrotherapy stimulation, used in hospitals for pain and stress management. It wasn’t there in 2021. Someone made a decision to add it.
“I was so nervous before going but I had absolutely no need to worry. Dr Sameer was amazing. I could not recommend him highly enough. He explained exactly what I needed and how it would help me.”
— Kathrina Bergin, public review
Dr. Mujtaba Lakho, known to patients as Dr. Sameer, ran the endodontics side of the practice. Root canals, smile makeovers with composite bonding, crown and bridge work. He was finishing a Master’s in Endodontics at Queen Mary while practicing in Mullingar. He also offered anti-wrinkle treatment, which sits in a different category entirely.
Anti-wrinkle injections, dermal fillers, Airflow stain removal, composite bonding, teeth whitening – none of this is standard for a Co. Westmeath family practice. It’s the service list of a clinic that decided, at some point, to grow toward cosmetic and specialist dentistry rather than staying purely preventive.
This broader conversation about wellbeing increasingly includes digital habits and how people use online entertainment services.
Patient wellbeing and everyday health habits
Modern dentistry increasingly focuses not only on treatment, but also on the overall experience of patients. Dental anxiety, stress before procedures and general wellbeing are topics many clinics now address directly. Techniques such as IV sedation, anxiety management and patient-centred care are designed to make visits more comfortable and accessible for people who might otherwise avoid treatment.
At the same time, health professionals often point out that everyday habits outside the clinic also influence overall wellbeing. Managing stress, maintaining healthy routines and making informed decisions about leisure activities are all part of a balanced lifestyle.
The same principle of moderation and self-awareness increasingly appears in digital services as well. Many regulated online platforms now provide tools designed to help users manage their behaviour and maintain healthy boundaries. For example, licensed online casinos available to Irish players typically include responsible gambling features such as deposit limits, session reminders, spending controls and voluntary self-exclusion options.
These tools are intended to support responsible use and help players stay in control of their activity online, reflecting a broader trend toward wellbeing-focused design across many modern services.
Children, sealants, and the preventive philosophy
The practice encouraged parents to bring children in from the moment the first tooth appeared. Toys and books in reception. An explicit focus on prevention over treatment, which, if it works, means fewer appointments, not more. That’s an unusual commercial position.
Fissure sealants were part of that. The procedure involves applying a thin resin coating to the biting surfaces of back teeth, sealing the grooves where decay typically starts. It takes one appointment, causes no discomfort, and can prevent years of fillings. The practice wrote about it in detail, because most parents have never been told it exists.
The practice also employed Dr. Oksana Zapototska, who specialised in children’s dentistry and oral hygiene, and who happened to speak Ukrainian – relevant in Mullingar, where the Ukrainian community grew significantly after 2022. The website listed her qualifications in both English and Ukrainian. That’s a detail that doesn’t show up in any review, but it mattered to the families it served.
Emergency appointments, GAA gum shields, and things that needed doing now
An emergency dentist in Mullingar meant the practice took same-day calls for toothache, broken teeth, and dental infections. Not walk-ins – appointments only, by phone, but the door wasn’t closed. The blog post on emergency dental care stayed live for years and was one of the consistently trafficked pages on the site.
GAA players in Ireland are required to wear mouthguards for all senior and junior activity. The practice was a supplier of the POWRGARD® Myobrace range – the kind that fits over braces, adjusts as a child grows, and meets the association’s protection standards. Custom-fitted IMPACT gumshields were available via 3D scanning.
Sports protection is compulsory for GAA. A gum shield from a dentist fits differently from one off a pharmacy shelf, and stays in place when it matters.
PRSI, Medical Cards, and what the Irish state covers
Ireland’s dental costs are almost entirely out-of-pocket. There’s no NHS equivalent. The Treatment Benefit Scheme, funded through PRSI contributions, covers a free dental examination once every two years and a subsidised scale and polish. That’s the extent of it.
Both employed workers and the self-employed qualify, provided they’ve made enough contributions. The self-employed often don’t know this. The practice published a detailed guide on PRSI dental benefits – what’s covered, how to check your contribution record on mywelfare.ie, what private insurance (Laya, VHI) adds on top.
€0
cost of a dental examination under the PRSI Treatment Benefit Scheme, for eligible contributors
Medical Card holders get a different set of entitlements, narrower in scope. The practice accepted patients on both schemes, alongside private patients and those using the humm finance option – a buy-now-pay-later arrangement for larger treatments like implants, orthodontics, or full mouth rehabilitation.
Invisalign, orthodontics, and a CV that didn’t fit the postcode
Orthodontics was where the specialist depth became most visible. Dr. Janusz Banasik held two postgraduate degrees – MSc Orthodontics from the University of Warwick and MSc Clinical Periodontology from UCLAN. In 2023, his research was accepted for presentation at the Annual Congress of the European Orthodontic Society. He was certified in Invisalign, Incognito lingual braces, and the Insignia advanced smile design system.
Faces & Braces, Dr. Greice and Dr. Eduardo, brought additional orthodontic capacity. Invisalign in Mullingar, clear aligners, metal braces, ceramic braces, children’s orthodontics. Patients who might previously have driven to Dublin or Athlone for specialist orthodontic care had options closer to home.
Teeth whitening sat alongside the orthodontics. The practice reviewed and stocked the Spotlight Oral Care range – hydrogen peroxide-free, enamel-safe formulations sold across Ireland. BlancOne Whitening, a professional in-clinic system, was added to the service list sometime between 2021 and the Shields rebrand. It wasn’t on the original site. Someone researched it, decided it was worth offering, and added it.
The merger: what Shields Dental Group is, and what changed
The announcement appeared on their official website without a date. ‘Mullingar Dental Centre is delighted to announce that it is now part of the Shields Dental Group.’ The copyright footer on the site moved from 2021 to 2025. That’s the bracket.
Shields Dental & Orthodontic Clinics is not a corporate rollup. The Shields family has been in dentistry since 1917, when Frank Shields qualified as one of the first dental surgeons in Co. Tyrone. His son became a leading figure in sedation techniques in Irish dentistry, which is why the group has unusually deep experience in managing anxious patients. Conor and Cormac Shields, twins, ran a private practice in London for a decade before returning to Ireland to build the group.
1917
the year the Shields family entered dentistry – three generations before the Mullingar acquisition
By the time Mullingar Dental Centre joined, Shields operated clinics in Limerick (two locations), Blackrock in Dublin, and Roscrea in Tipperary. Mullingar was the fifth.
What changed after the merger: the brand name, Saturday hours (now closed), and Martins Lane (now closed). What stayed: the Austin Friars address, the phone number, the email, and the team.
The Martins Lane closure isn’t announced anywhere. It’s simply absent from the current location listings on both familydentist.ie and shieldsdentalclinic.ie/mullingar. No statement, no explanation. The practice went from two locations to one, and the change is documented only by absence.
The Facebook page was renamed: Shields Dental & Orthodontic Clinic (Formerly Mullingar Dental Centre). Posts continue regularly. Dr. Kambiz joined as a general dentist, introduced on social media as someone who focuses on patients who’ve had difficult experiences elsewhere.
Where the practice stands now
The rebrand is complete. But the things patients actually deal with – the building, the team, the phone number, the appointment process – are unchanged. Dr. Anne O’Donnell remains Clinical Director. Dr. Sameer continues his endodontics work. Donna Paton still runs hygiene. Dr. Janusz Banasik is still the orthodontist with two postgraduate degrees. The practice added Dr. Kambiz to the general dentistry side, introduced specifically as someone who works well with patients who’ve had difficult experiences in the past.
Appointments by phone: 044 9340370. No walk-ins. For patients who travelled across Co. Westmeath, or from further, to see a specific dentist or hygienist, that arrangement is the same as it always was.
We are independent content creators. This article is a third-party informational review and has nothing to do with Mullingar Dental Centre or Shields Dental Group. We are not affiliated with them, we don’t represent them, and we don’t provide any dental services.