The college was founded in 2004 by Shane Ormsby who was principal shareholder and served as director. Originally called the Institute of Business and Technology, its first campus was on Forster Way in the Swords area of north Dublin. In 2006, it received programme validation from the Higher Education and Training Awards Council (HETAC). By 2011, it was offering the Certificate in Business, Higher Certificate in Business, Bachelor of Business, and Bachelor of Business (Honours). In addition to those HETAC-validated programmes, it also offered an MBA validated by the University of Wales Trinity Saint David and various accountancy, business, and technology training programmes which at the time were approved by ATI, ACCA, ICS and ICM.

The college changed its name to IBAT College Swords in July 2009. It was changed again in July 2011 to its present name, IBAT College Dublin, to reflect its move to a new purpose-built main campus in the centre of Dublin at Temple Bar. In 2016 the college was acquired by the Global University Systems group, one of Europe's largest private third-level education groups,[citation needed] with presences across more than 60 countries.[2] A QQI review was taking place at the time of the acquisition and following re-engagement with QQI in 2018, the college received approval to run a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in Business in 2019.