Well, I don't use LIRC, but you could try adding the module to /etc/conf.d/modules to see if that loads it:
Re: Automatic module load on bootIf there are no modules currently declared in your /etc/conf.d/modules then you would add:
modules="lirc_mceusb2" # or whatever the driver is called.
module_lirc_mceusb2_args="" # If any arguments have to be passed to the LIRC module then put them between the quotation marks.
If there are some modules currently declared in your /etc/conf.d/modules then you would add it to the existing list:
modules="<module1> <module2> lirc_mceusb2" # or whatever the LIRC driver is called.
module_lirc_mceusb2_args="" # If any arguments have to be passed to the LIRC module then put them between the quotation marks.
Have you had a look at the Gentoo Linux Wiki article on setting up LIRC? Perhaps there's something in there that would help you (but remember that the configuration file to load modules has changed from
/etc/modules.autoload.d/kernel-2.6 to /etc/conf.d/modules, as explained in the above-mentioned SL Forum post).