How to install lirc in Python 3.8 when previously installed in Python 3.5?

Question

I have been using lirc in Python 2.7 and Python 3.5.3 on Rpi3. Now I have installed Python 3.8.7 from source code, but I am not able to use lirc in this version of Python, but it still works in Python 3.5. apt-get reports that python3-lirc is already the newest version (1.2.1-2). How to get lirc work in both Python 3.5 and 3.8?

pi@RPi3:~ $ python
Python 3.8.7 (default, Jan  7 2021, 08:59:27)
[GCC 6.3.0 20170516] on linux
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import lirc
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'lirc'
>>>

pi@RPi3:~ $ python3.5
Python 3.5.3 (default, Nov 18 2020, 21:09:16)
[GCC 6.3.0 20170516] on linux
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import lirc
>>> sockid=lirc.init("myProg", blocking = False)
>>>

Answer 1

Module lirc has to be uninstalled with pip, then python-lirc can be installed in Python 3,8 as described in https://github.com/tompreston/python-lirc/issues/26 after installing cyhton with pip.