No it's not ridiculous, sitting at the front end of a flying office having 3 auto pilots doing the work is very different to hand flying a light single manually. Something goes wrong in an airliner out comes the checklist and TWO people resolve the problem. In a light Twin or single on your own the workload is totally different.
As an IR holder I think it is one of the things the CAA have got very right.
My friend is a 17,000hr training Captain and thinks that having to revalidate is correct.
If your 30,000 hr Captain is that good then they should not be able to take a single crew IR renewal in there stride?