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A former senior member of staff at Muckamore Abbey Hospital has outlined how there was a recurring issue with delays when discharging patients, with some waiting 10 or more years to be discharged.

Esther Rafferty was a service manager and associate director of nursing at the County Antrim hospital from 2012.

She addressed the Muckamore Hospital Inquiry on Tuesday, which is examining allegations of abuse and the ill-treatment of patients.

Ms Rafferty said the length of time that some patients were waiting was "very startling".

"There were patients who were awaiting discharge, and because more people came forward as delayed discharges, some of those were easier to resettle, and sometimes they went out quicker than those waiting the longest," she said.

Ms Rafferty said it was unsettling for some families and that at one point a judicial review began involving one patient who was delayed discharge.

She told the inquiry there were several reasons for the delays, including a lack of community placements or support services or finding a placement suitable for certain patients.

"Some individuals found it difficult to live with others, and what we found is that for some of those individuals that lived in a ward setting, the incidents of adult safeguarding would have increased because of assaults or attacks on other patients," she said.

"We would have taken steps to minimise attacks on patients, but then sometimes attacks on staff increased... but if a patient found it difficult to share a space with others, we had to find them somewhere in the community suited to them."

Ms Rafferty said when she first arrived at Muckamore in 2012, discharges or resettlements were also done on a ward-by-ward basis rather than based on the needs of a patient.

Therefore, some patients were waiting longer than required, simply because they weren't on a particular ward.

This system changed shortly after 2012.