Hi,
It took some time, but I finally found the culprit. It's udev, namely
one of the local rules I put in, to get a handy shortcut for lirc:
KERNEL=="input*", ATTRS{name}=="IR-receiver inside an USB DVB
receiver", SYMLINK+="input/dvb-ir"
for some reason it basically stops udev from properly loading the firmware.
kind regards
Pshem