A quick browse through the 2,300-and-growing submitted ideas on the Your Country Your Call website makes for interesting, enlightening, and often bonkers reading. Most of the entries for Martin McAleese's project, which draws on ideas from the public to make Ireland a better place, only confirm my longstanding belief that there is just a minority of the population that is actually sane.

There are some decent enough ones, and many that revolve around some kind of nationalised work camp structure for people on the dole, technology projects that seem to be drafted from the storylines of sci-fi B-movies, uppity personal interest 'ideas' that are self-serving, and replications of ideas that already exist which involve water or wind turbines.

Whether or not Your Country Your Call will be of any service, the top thoughts are worth €100,000. So in the spirit of the weekend, I've decided to opensource my own ideas to transform Ireland. Feel free to nick them and win money for yourselves, although a 10% cut would be nice.

My Top Six Ideas To Make Ireland A Better Place:

1. Interviews for ministerial candidates

As much as I would like to be head monkey manager at Dublin Zoo, a ridiculously well-paid pen pusher at the HSE, or a physicist at Cern mucking about with the Large Hadron Collider, I'm not actually qualified for any of those jobs. Hard jobs require qualifications, competence and experience. Wouldn't it be nice if our political top dogs actually had to meet such criteria? I propose a series of televised interviews of ministerial candidates, so that politicians in charge of huge portfolios actually have the skills and expertise to do the job, instead of the usual selection process, which seems to be "he was the first one I saw when I came out of the jacks in Buswells".

2. Result-based free student accommodation

You know those 345,000 empty housing units? And you know the way students struggle to pay rent? Well, how about developers (who are paying for the existence of the properties anyway, so they might as well make something from them) forge a deal with universities whereby students pay rent based on their results. Not doing very well because you've been on the sauce for the first half of being a fresher? Then your rent goes up. Getting firsts in every essay and exam? Then you're a keeper and your rent goes down. As well as filling up dead apartment complexes, it gives students an incentive to work harder and come out of college with better degrees.

3. Align headshop licensing with current alcohol licensing

Don't ban headshops or so-called legal highs, because new chemical variants of even less-regulated and untested substances will crop up every time you make one illegal. Instead regulate them. It's completely ridiculous that you can't buy a bottle of wine in a shop after 10pm, so why should you be able to purchase unregulated mind-altering substances 24 hours a day? Bump up the VAT on headshop products, and subject the premises to strict opening hours and planning regulations. Most of the violence and irresponsibility associated with headshops occurs late at night. And for good measure, on Good Friday, licensed premises selling alcohol should be allowed choose if they can open.

4. Overhaul current licensing laws

The ridiculously early closing times for nightclubs affects employment in the bar and nightclub sector, has a huge impact on tourism, forces up drink prices, encourages fast-paced drinking, and stems what should be a creative and positive nightlife and clubbing culture. Extend opening hours for clubs who want them, stagger closing times for others and booze-related problems on our streets will drop.

5. Foster long-term energy efficiency

Retro-fitting of houses with elaborate energy saving hardware is probably not the answer to being truly green. Instead, we need to look for a practical solution that can be implemented across all households. Energy companies should base their charges on how efficient a household is. If a building is using less electricity/gas than a graded average, then they should be charged even less for the energy units they do use. The revenue ESB and Bord Gais make on the higher-scale outputs from homes would then go back into bumping up the heating allowance for pensioners.

6. Reflect social change in legislation

Ireland will never be able to move forward while huge chunks of its population are alienated from the constitution, are dissaffected, and unable to relate to what Ireland 'is'. That's why real issues including abortion and civil marriage along with attention to same-sex parents need to be reflected in our legislation. If something exists within a society, then the government has a duty to attend to it in our constitution instead of ignoring the issues in a backward fashion.

You're all welcome to these free ideas. And Mr McAleese, I charge reasonable consultation rates – usually a can of Diet Coke and a chicken roll if it's lunchtime.