In Ireland we have pension vehicles called Personal Pensions and Personal Retirement Savings Accounts (PRSAs). If you Google either of these terms, you should find plenty of background reading on them.
You may not get too many replies on this board as to whether or not your IRA can be used to buy a property here in Ireland. I would imagine that this would be something for the US authorities to decide?
For what it's worth, you can't use an Irish pension fund to buy property that you will use yourself. Don't know if similar rules apply in the States.