solved it.
I needed the component-scan configurations in the service and dao layers
Code:
<context:component-scan base-package="x.y.dao">
<context:include-filter type="annotation"
expression="org.springframework.stereotype.Repository"/>
</context:component-scan>
and
Code:
<context:component-scan base-package="x.y.service">
<context:include-filter type="annotation"
expression="org.springframework.stereotype.Service"/>
</context:component-scan>
with these in place the service and dao were detected.
cheers