Star Wars was restored in 1995-1997. It was paid for by Fox and cost about $20 million of their dollars. Lucas doesnt know what the fuck he is talking about. The restoration is already done and it didn't cost him a dime, he would hardly have to do anything at all. The only thing you would have to do is repair the missing 5% of the film to un-SE it and then colour time the transfer properly. If he wanted to go further he could start doing further dirt removal, but they didn't do that for 1997 and it looked bloody good then.

Its basically only a little bit more work than a straight transfer of the film.