Kodi 16 (and 17), Xubuntu Xenial, LIRC

I hope that someone can help me with this. I am having issues with LIRC not starting on my KodiBox.

The current situation is as follows:

If I boot the box in to the Kodi session, LIRC and my RC6 mce remote do not work.
Exiting from Kodi to the desktop results in a working remote.
Then the remote still works if I start Kodi, or log off/log on into the Kodi session.

Booting into the Xubuntu session then starting Kodi or logging off/logging on to the Kodi session results in a working remote.

For some reason, LIRC is not starting when booting straight in to the Kodi session.
This situation seemed to start fairly recently, perhaps with a kernel update? Does anyone have any ideas?

LIRC: 0.9.0-0ubuntu6
Xubuntu: 16.04.1 (kernel: 4.4.0-57)
Kodi 16.1 and 17.0beta7