My Favourite Room: 'After Dad died, I thought, "Home is home". It just clicked'

Where a person comes in a family can have a huge impact on his or her future career.

People often follow in the footsteps of older siblings – though, in certain situations, it can mean doing exactly the opposite. That was certainly the case for Cork man Morgan O’Gara, the youngest of four boys, and now one of south Dublin’s top dentists.

Morgan’s eldest brother, Colin, is a psychiatrist, and when Morgan toyed with the idea of becoming a doctor as well, he consulted Colin, who promptly put him off the idea. “To be honest, I didn’t know what I wanted to do,” Morgan says. “I was torn between medicine, engineering, and then dentistry was a last-minute thought. Colin steered me away from medicine. He was doing his exams and he said it’s a long road, whereas dentistry is five years and you’re qualified.”

Morgan could also have opted for a career in rugby like another brother, Ronan – some say that Morgan was the best player of the lot, but Morgan dismisses the idea and adds, “I played rugby through school and college and had a Munster trial, but I broke my thumb playing rugby twice in fourth year in dentistry. The dean of dentistry, a big rugby fan, said I’d have to make a choice. He did it in a fun way but, in reality, I was missing clinical time, and anyway I wasn’t enjoying it as much.”

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Medicine’s – and rugby’s – loss is definitely dentistry’s gain. The affable Morgan has been making a name for himself at Blackrock Dental, where he practises all types of dentistry and specialises in aesthetics.

“I do a lot of cosmetic work and I enjoy big cases where it’s mouth rehabilitation, where you go on a journey with the patient on day one to the end. I find that very rewarding; changing someone’s smile, essentially,” the boyish Cork man explains.

“Obviously helping people who are in pain is important, and people who’ve been embarrassed by their teeth for years, it’s brilliant,” he enthuses, while Daphne adds, “Morgan’s composite work is another level. I’ve seen people’s whole faces transformed.”

Daphne is not just being a loyal wife here, she does see Morgan’s work at close quarters, as she is the practice manager at Blackrock Dental.

It’s not something the genial Bray woman set out to do. Daphne has had several careers, including in marketing, and teaching. The couple got together in their final years at university; both were students in UCC, as she was studying commerce, while he was doing dentistry.

“We actually met in first year at my cousin’s party, and we were chatting, but even though we had similar friends, we never met again until final year at the jazz festival,” Daphne recalls. “I remember he said to me, ‘You’re Daphne, aren’t you?’ I said, ‘How do you remember my name?’ He said, ‘Ah, the Dublin one’,” bubbly Daphne says with a laugh. “Straight away, it was like we were together years, though we weren’t.”

It was the done thing for newly qualified dentists to go to London, so Morgan headed off in 2007, and Daphne went too. She got a job first in marketing, but she found the hours extremely long, and she didn’t enjoy the work. So, on the advice of Morgan’s mother, a teacher, she did further study, which qualified her as a secondary teacher of business education.

At the same time, Morgan worked in a busy NHS practice in North Kent while also doing a master’s in aesthetic dentistry. They married in 2011, and soon after, they decided to go to Perth in Australia. “We wanted to start a family, but London was the last place we wanted to bring them up, it’s too busy,” says Daphne.

They loved Australia, made great friends there and both loved their jobs. They bought a beautiful house, which they furnished with the help of friends – some fellow Irish living there, and some newfound Australian friends. They were living the dream, completed by the arrival of Cameron, who is now seven.

“We had the best four years. Everyone was very welcoming – practically all our furniture is from friends in Perth, and I had a great mums’ group,” says Daphne.

But then, out of the blue, when Daphne was pregnant with their second child, Imogen, now five, her dad passed away, and suddenly their feelings changed completely.

“I felt very guilty because Cameron was Mum’s only grandchild and we were so far away,” Daphne says. “Up to then, we were never coming home, but after Dad died, I thought, ‘Home is home’, and Morgan just said, ‘Let’s go home’. It just clicked.” They finally came home in 2016, at which time Daphne – who, like Morgan, is the youngest of four – was pregnant with their twin boys, Lachlan and Caleb, who are now three.

Two years ago, Morgan bought Blackrock Dental from Tom Feeney, who continues to work in the practice; together with their associate, Stephanie Healy, they cover all bases: family dentistry, preventative dentistry and, of course, cosmetic dentistry like teeth whitening and Invisalign.

Morgan is at pains to point out that the practice of dentistry has been transformed over the years, and that the chief changes have been wrought, as is the case with every other area of life, by technology, making everything easier for the patient. “There are no messy impressions any more, it’s all digital scans, and everything is more accurate,” Morgan says.

Daphne works in the practice part-time, and while she misses teaching and thinks she might get back to it eventually, she says she loves meeting the patients, helping them to get their pain and any mouth issues solved.

“I love working in the practice. I think it’s something I get from my mother, who owns a nursing home, and has always looked after people,” Daphne explains.

It was actually thanks to her mother that the couple found their lovely home. They started looking in 2015, and fortunately got good advice from an Irish bank, which advised them to get mortgage approval while still in Australia, where they still both had jobs, explaining that it mightn’t be as easy applying when they got home and were in transition.

Once that was sorted – from Perth – they started looking, and were first going to buy a particular site and build, but a bidding war started and they had to pull out. “Then mum came across this little estate by accident,” says Daphne. “We were home on holiday and had actually been at a wedding and were feeling a bit delicate, when she rang and said, ‘Get yourselves up here, you have to see these houses’.

“And she was right. We saw the showhouse and we loved it. Dad always said. ‘If you’re buying in an estate, only buy the end house’, so we insisted on that and got it,” Daphne says.

Another good piece of advice from her late dad was to give the builders a deadline to speed them up. “I told them our anniversary was on May 28, and we were having a huge party and the house would have to be done,” says Daphne.

It worked, and they moved in, and it has turned out perfectly, with five bedrooms, two of which are en suite; an elegant living room; a playroom; and a really spacious kitchen/living room with pale-green units.

“How many hours did I spend on the kitchen?” Daphne asks rhetorically. “There were 120 things on my list to change from the standard. I wanted to change the taps, I wanted to change the size of the island. The colour of the units was another one of them. The colour is pebble grey. I wanted a green kitchen and I kept saying, ‘I don’t want it to be grey’, but Dec the builder said, ‘Trust me’, and I did, and it is green,” she says. To show how contrary women can be, she adds: “Actually, I’d like to change it to navy now.”

Most of the furniture is from Australia, and Morgan’s mother helped to change up some pieces by painting them. Daphne has turned pieces like Cameron’s baby changing table into a desk. “I love it for the nostalgia,” she says.

With four kids under the age of seven, it was crucial to have a good playroom, and it is lovely, with interesting wallpaper and fun kids’ stickers. The flooring is unusual – green and it actually looks like grass. “Cameron is so used to be being outside, I thought I better make it look like the outdoors,” Daphne says.

A chip off the old block, he loves being outside, and, among other sports, he plays rugby. Now what will happen if he’s picked for Leinster?

Blackrock Dental, 6 Main St, Blackrock, Co Dublin, tel: (01) 278-9007, see blackrockdental.ie

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