The “sickening scenes” were witnessed at a community-run playground in Blarney, Co Cork.

Parents alerted community council members to the situation after some children came down from zip wires with their hands covered in the excrement.

Within minutes they discovered that it was smeared everywhere.

The county council decided to bring in expert contractors to power-hose and sanitise the playground.

Blarney Community Council chairman Kevin Conway was one of the first on the scene.

Mr Conway, who is also a county councillor, said he couldn’t believe what he witnessed. “It was absolutely revolting. I just can’t believe that anybody would do this. It was everywhere. The council had to bring in a specialist company to disinfect the whole area. I don’t yet know how much it cost, but it took them around half a day to do it,” Mr Conway said.

He said he can’t understand what motive the person or people that did it had.

“The community council have put on extra patrols at night because we believe that’s when it happened and we don’t want a repeat of it,” he said.

Cllr Bob Ryan was also alerted to the recent incident and visited the playground before it was cleaned up.

“It was absolutely revolting. It’s a really sad indication of society that somebody would do this. It wasn’t dog excrement, it was human excrement,” he said.

He added there was so much of it smeared around the playground that somebody must have brought in bags of it.

Mr Conway said that additional security was needed for the playground to prevent a recurrence.

He told council engineers that they would have to put in additional lighting.

“If this continues we may have to lock the playground at night and put up bigger fencing so people can’t get in,” he said.