In Ireland its fairly bad for people that bought during the boom. They may need to downsize/sell their apartment that suited them before the family but are in negative equity so have to take a loss on the sale and as they are no longer first time buyers they need 20% deposit in cash and can borrow up to 3.5 times salary so that is going to be very difficult to buy a family home now.
The flipside of the coin is that we are not building in Dublin so a lot of people are stuck between a rock and hard place and very little is moving. Things might get worse, don't believe the hype.