Glad you sorted it. 
One comment though, make sure you are using the right fstab mount options - with the correct mount options it will wait for nfs to mount on first access to files on the nfs share - the mount options you need are different to raspbmc. Please see my comments in this thread:
In theory this should prevent the problem you saw where lirc started before your nfs share was mounted - because as soon as lirc tried to access a file in your nfs share it would trigger the share to automatically mount and wait until it did so.
x-systemd.automount,noauto are the recommended options for nfs mounts in osmc. (Don’t use auto or _netdev)