Buttons not functioing on menu

I have a menu that pops out on rollover and then goes back in on rollout.
The problem is anything placed on the menu either buttons or movieclips do not seem to function any ideas why this happens or how to overcome it?

The structure is as follows
_root
menu_mc (with in/out animation)
menugfx_mc(movieclip that contains the menu bar/buttons)
menu_gfx
buttons

Now the menu goes up and down just fine but the buttons refuse to work