More than 9,000 proposals were submitted to the  Your Country, Your Call competition, which closed for entrants last Friday.

The competition, searching for innovative ides to boost the Irish economy, is offering two prizes of $130,000 to the winning proposals.

A fund of $1.3 million is also available to develop the winning proposals, and a professional advisory group will also give free advice.

Split into categories, the most popular was energy and environment, which received 1,362 entries, followed by tourism and hospitality (1,165).

Health, sport, food and agriculture categories received the lowest number of entries.

A judging panel will narrow the field down to 20 semi finalists, and then five finalists will be chosen before the winners are announced.

Chancellor of Dublin City University, David Byrne,  will chair the judging panel, and he said the panel would be looking for ideas that had the potential to kick-start the economy by creating jobs or reforming existing businesses.

The competition is the brainchild of President Mary McAleese's husband Martin McAleese.

However, the competition has been criticized for forcing the winning entries to surrender their intellectual property rights of an idea.

DCU president Ferdinand Von Prondzynski is a member of the committee, and he said it was essential that the transfer of property rights was allowed as legal challenges could hamper the implementation of a productive idea.

Von Prondzynski said the competitions organization was a not for profit body and said it would not exploit intellectual property rights of the winning idea.

Entries include putting prisoners to work, tax incentives, and making Ireland the Hollywood of the computer games industry.

All 9,000 entries can be viewed on www.yourcuntryyourcall.com.